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GOLDEN SONGS OF THE GOLDEN STATE 




GOLDEN SONGS 

of like 

GOLDEN// STATE 







AC «, 



Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 

1917 



Published November, 1917 



GEC -3 1917 



W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO 



A479376 



To L. J. M., A. M. L. and R. G. L. 

AND TO OTHER FRIENDS IN SANTA BARBARA WHO 
TAUGHT ME THE LOVELINESS OF CALIFORNIA 



CONTENTS 



Part One 

PAGE 

Pioneer Voices i 



Part Two 
Voices of the Great Singers 29 

Part Three 
Living Voices 61 



INTRODUCTION 

In preparing this collection of verse for publi- 
cation, I have had two purposes : first, to make an 
interesting book — the ancient and ever-living pur- 
pose of all makers of good literature — and second, 
to give to all who may desire it a volume of poems 
that sing and celebrate the traditions, the life, and 
the natural beauty of one of the greatest common- 
wealths in the union. The romance and hardship, 
the gayety and the heroism of the days of the padres 
and the later pioneers, the adventurous dash and 
flare of the 'forty-niners, the rich, golden health and 
prosperity of all the days that have followed the 
pioneer period — all these things are most vivid and 
colorful history and tradition and have had no small 
part in creating for Californians that heritage of 
naive and fierce affection — belligerent devotion to 
their commonwealth and its life and customs — by 
which they are known and with which they startle 
the quieter and cooler hearts of men and women of 
more staid and sober states. All of these things have 
inspired California poets and visiting poets, as read- 
ers of the following pages will know. But, most of 
all, I think, the poets love California for that unique 
natural beauty often obscured rather than suggested 

ix 



Introduction 



by the trite and dull effusions in praise of it. Her 
mountain peaks chiselled singly, clean and hard 
against the sky, or ranged in an august uneven line 
of power and beauty; her lovable foothills sloping 
in steep curves to the coast ; her mild, sweet-scented 
valleys with their straitly confined orchards of 
almond, orange and plum, with their crisp fields of 
barley stubble in summertime and their riot of wild 
mustard in the spring; her winding trails leading 
always into El Camino Real or into the desert 
beyond the mountains; her gusty distances of desert 
or sea shore; her forests born before Christ; her 
hundreds of species of wild birds; her tawny sum- 
mers and green winters ; her sharp, exquisite lights 
and shadows and keen colors — these things no poet, 
no lover of beauty can forget. Nowhere else can 
one climb higher or plumb deeper the depths and 
heights of varied beauty. 

Many songs of many singers bear witness to this 
beauty. A large anthology could be made of the 
poems that have been written about one flower — 
the escholtzia, or California poppy. It is the duty of 
the anthologist to choose the coins of best metal, 
best minted in this treasury of verbal expression. 
And that is what I have tried to do. Critics are cer- 
tain to tell me that I have left out many poems just 
as good as many that I have included, and they will 
be telling the truth. George Sterling has written 



Introduction xi 



many poems as good as those that I have chosen, but 
I could not choose them all. Other critics are sure 
to blame me for including poems with imperfections 
or poems of a type and kind not to their taste. If I 
might gently disarm such criticism I would say, first 
of all, that poems with imperfections, like people 
with imperfections, are not necessarily valueless. 
As we know few perfect human beings, we know few 
perfect poems. And just as it sometimes happens 
that the man or woman with no vices is a man or 
woman with no aggressive virtues, so it sometimes 
happens that poems with faults and flaws are so 
vigorously and sincerely written as to be superior 
to creations more artificial and correct. Such poems 
■ — -and there are quite a number of them — are in- 
cluded in this book because they seem to me to 
give the real zest and flavor of the scene or event 
described, in spite of their faults, of course, and not 
because of them. It seems fair, also, to tell critics 
and others who may be interested, that I have tried 
not to be governed overmuch by personal taste 
in the making of this book. All anthologists are 
tempted to be autocratic. But this is the day of 
democracy. I have included in this book two or 
three poems — I shall never tell which — that I, 
myself, can not read without acute mental suffering. 
Let me tell why. 

One evening, while I was deliberating about one 



xii Introduction 



poem which I dislike, but which has been exceed- 
ingly popular, I entered the public library in New 
[York City. And while I was standing at the desk, 
awaiting my turn to ask for much needed informa- 
tion, a quiet, plainly dressed, little woman with tired 
eyes turned to the attendant at the desk and asked 
for the very poem I had in mind. " I want to get it 
and copy it for my sister," she said, "and I don't 
know what book to find it in and I have looked and 
looked .... I read it a long time ago and never 
forgot it." (The attendant was young and had never 
heard of the poem.) I told her that I would find it 
for her and I did. Very gratefully she thanked me. 
Then I said, " Do you like that poem very much? " 
"Oh, yes; yes, indeed," she said humbly; "it is a 
great poem — a very great poem." When I left her 
I copied it and put it with those for this book. 

Perhaps a few readers will be surprised to find 
in this book poems by poets who have only visited 
on the coast. In answer I can only say that I have 
felt that in a sense California belongs to us all — not 
only to the native sons and daughters, but to the 
many who have been refreshed and strengthened 
and healed by sojourning there. And I have felt, 
also, that all the poems inspired by California belong 
to California and may rightly be used in a book of 
this kind. But whenever it has been possible I have 
given the preference to poems by western poets who 



Introduction xiii 



have made their reputations in the West or who are 
now living there and definitely associated with the 
West. 

The first poem in the book is one of the old folk- 
songs of the days of the padres, a dialogue folksong 
with much of the naive spirit of childhood and play 
in it. It was always sung in Spanish in the early 
days but has recently been translated into English 
by Eleanor Hague, who learned it from Mrs. Fran- 
cisca de la Guerra Dibblee of Santa Barbara, and 
has included it with a number of other Spanish 
California folksongs in a book which will soon be 
published by The Folklore Society. The second 
poem, " The Song," is taken from a long poem called 
" Juanita," written by Lauren E. Crane in the very 
early days of California literature and published in 
one of the early numbers of the Overland Monthly. 
It deserves especial mention, for it is most gracefully 
written with every appearance of spontaneity, and 
yet keeps true to a complicated rhyme scheme that 
would tax the skill of any poet. The three long 
lines in each stanza are thrice rhymed, having two 
internal rhymes and one end rhyme each. This 
is surely one of the cleverest and most effective 
rhymed lyrics ever written by an American, for the 
art disguises itself and the poem loses no warmth 
and charm, and gains melody from the rhyming. I 
saw it first in that helpful book by Ella Sterling 



xiv Introduction 



Cummins (Mrs. Mighels), The Story of the Files, 
to which book I recommend all readers who wish to 
know more of many poets whose work is found in 
these pages. The third poem, " The Days of 'Forty- 
nine," is an old folk ballad of the days of the gold 
rush, and no California anthology is complete with- 
out it. Nobody knows who wrote it, and several 
versions are extant, but, in so far as I know, all 
have the same chorus, 

For the Days of Old, the Days of Gold 
And the Days of 'Forty-nine. 

The other poems included in the collection seem to 
me to require no comment. Suffice it to say that I 
have tried to represent all types and kinds of poetry 
that have been written in the state by at least one 
selection. 

The matter of classification has been very diffi- 
cult, for almost all of the poems included in the book 
have been written since 1870 and almost all of the 
poets have lived in the day and generation that we 
know or that was known to our mothers and fathers, 
and are therefore contemporaries. Therefore I have 
decided to name in a group together those poets 
whose reputations are national and international, 
Joaquin Miller, Ina Coolbrith, Edwin Markham 
and the others called " Voices of the Great Singers " ; 
and to classify the others in two groups — " Pioneer 



Introduction xv 



Voices" — those whose singing is done or whose 
work belongs to the period that prepared the way 
for the great singers — and "Living Voices" — 
those who are still singing or whose work by its 
type and kind belongs to today. I very much regret 
that it is impossible to include in this volume any 
poems by Ambrose Bierce, who should be one of the 
" Pioneer Voices." He was — or is — the pioneer lit- 
erary critic of the coast, the first to insist on the intel- 
lectual values in literature as opposed to the purely 
sentimental values, and he has done much to influence 
the younger Calif ornians of today and even the great 
singers. I can best describe him in the words of 
Bailey Millard, himself a clever California critic. 
Writing in the Bookman, Mr. Millard says of Am- 
brose Bierce : " He revered nobody's opinion but his 
own, and in this idea he was upheld by a flattering 
literary coterie who acknowledged him as master. 
These constituted an esoteric cult whose adulation 
Bierce accepted as a matter of course. They laid 
their literary work before him, rejoiced in his praise, 
however stinted, and received his harshest criticism 
without a murmur For technically his pen- 
craft was of the purest, as is shown on nearly every 
page. He prided himself on being ruled wholly by 
intellect, never by emotion." 

Robert Cameron Rogers is classified with " Living 
Voices," although he died several years ago. He 



xvi Introduction 



belonged rather more to the present generation than 
to the pioneers, and would not be a very old man if 
he were living today. 

Special attention should be called to the fact that 
five poems included in this volume are taken from 
The Stanford Book of Verse, a college anthology of 
unusual merit published last year by The English 
Club of Stanford University. They are the poems 
by Marjorie Charles Driscoll, Dare Stark, Maxwell 
Anderson, James Leo Duff, and Geroid Robinson. 

Many poems have been taken from the files of 
the Overland Monthly, a magazine with a glorious 
history and many great names to its credit. Many 
others have been printed for the first time in Sunset, 
which is now the best known of western magazines. 
Others — several of the most finished and crafts- 
manlike poems — have been taken from that bright 
little magazine edited by Gelett Burgess and called 
the Lark, one of the gayest and wittiest of Ameri- 
can magazines and of great reputation, although its 
history was only two years long. In that magazine 
Gelett Burgess made the " purple cow " famous. A 
number of excellent poems also have been printed 
for the first time in the Los Angeles Graphic, 
which, under the editorship of Samuel Travers 
Clover, was the best literary periodical in the South- 
west for several years. And Poetry, A Magazine of 
Verse, although it is published in Chicago, has pub- 



Introduction xvii 



lished some of the best poems about California 
included in the section called "Living Voices." 
Other periodicals and publishers will find that I have 
given them due credit for poems used from their 
files in the pages directly following. 

It remains only to thank those who have read 
this introduction for the interest which has carried 
them thus far and to hope that they may find pleasure 
in the reading of the pages that are to follow. This 
book is not the only California Anthology. Read- 
ers who are interested in the literature of the Golden 
State will wish to read also the collections of verse 
compiled by Oscar Schuck, Edmond Russell, and 
Augustin Macdonald. They will find poems in those 
books which I have not included in mine. And they 
will find poems in mine which are not in the others. 
To their kindly attention and interest I commend 
this collection of representative California poems. 

Marguerite Wilkinson. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The thanks of the compiler of this collection of 
poems are due to the following publishers and pro- 
prietors of material used in this book, for their kind 
permission to reprint it. 

To A. M. Robertson for "The Black Vulture" from 
The House of Orchids by George Sterling, and for " The 
Voice of the Dove " and " The Last Days " from Beyond 
the Breakers by George Sterling, and for " A California 
Song " and " Forest Couplets " from A California Trouba- 
dour by Clarence Urmy, and for " As I Came Down Mount 
Tamalpais " from A Vintage of Verse by Clarence Urmy, 
and for " Nero" from The Star Treader and Other Poems 
by Clark Ashton Smith. . 

To Houghton Mifflin Company for " El Canelo " from 
The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor, for " The Angelus," 
" Reveille," and " What the Bullet Sang " from The Poet- 
ical Works of Bret Harte, for " On a Picture of Mount 
Shasta by Keith " from the Poetical Works of Edward 
Rowland Sill, for " California " and " When the Grass 
Shall Cover Me " from Songs from the Golden Gate by 
Ina Coolbrith, and for "Windy Morning" from A Lonely 
Flute by Odell Shepard. 

To Doubleday, Page & Company for "The Man with 
the Hoe " and " Joy of the Hills " from The Man with the 
Hoe and Other Poems by Edwin Markham and for " The 
Heart's Return " from The Shoes of Happiness by Edwin 
Markham. 

To The Century Co. for " El Poniente " and " St. John 
of Nepomuc " from The Night Court and Other Verses 
by Ruth Comfort Mitchell, and for " The White Feet of 
Atthis " by Henry Anderson Lafler. 

xix 



xx Acknowledgments 



To Harr Wagner Publishing Company, publishers of 
Joaquin Miller's Complete Works, for " In Yosemite Val- 
ley " and the short lyrics by Joaquin Miller included in this 
volume, and for " To the Colorado Desert " from The Lure 
of the Desert by Madge Morris Wagner, and for " Night in 
Camp " and " Morning in Camp " from Songs from Puget 
Sea by Herbert Bashford. 

To Small, Maynard & Company for " The Bed of Fleur- 
de-Lys " from In This Our World by Charlotte Perkins 
Gilman, and for " California of the South " from Sea Drift 
by Grace Ellery Channing. 

To Little, Brown and Company for "A Ballad of the 
Gold Country " from Poems by Helen Hunt Jackson. 

To Funk & Wagnalls Company for " Indirection " from 
Poems by Richard Realf. 

To Frederick A. Stokes Company for "Coyote" and 
"Presidio Hill" from At the Silver Gate by John Vance 
Cheney. 

To The Macmillan Company for " Let Us Go Home to 
Paradise " from Calif ornians by Robinson Jeffers. 

To the John Lane Company for " The Rosary " from The 
Rosary and Other Poems by Robert Cameron Rogers. 

To Charles Scribner's Sons for " In the States " from 
A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, for 
"The Bells of San Gabriel" from Poems of Charles War- 
ren Stoddard, edited by Ina Coolbrith, and for " Western 
Blood " by Juliet Wilbur Thompkins. 

To Mitchell Kennerley for " In the Valley " from From 
the Eastern Sea by Yone Noguchi. 

To Elder & Shepard for " A Wedding-Day Gallop " from 
Poems by Irene Hardy. 

To Paul Elder & Co. for " To Paleolithic Man " from 
Out of Bondage by Fanny Hodges Newman. 

To Raphael Weill for "El Vaquero " by Lucius Har- 
wood Focte. 

To the Overland Monthly and to The J. B. Lippincott 
Company for " Evening " by Edward Pollock. 



Acknowledgments xxi 



To The English Club of Stanford University for 
" Youth's Songs " by Maxwell Anderson, " Amateurs " by 
Geroid Robinson, " The Song of Thomas the Rhymer " by 
Marjorie Charles Driscoll, " Mater Dolorosa " by James 
Leo Duff, and " Luck " by Dare Stark, all these being 
taken from A Book of Stanford Verse. 

To Franz Boas and The Folklore Society for Eleanor 
Hague's translation of " O Blanca Virgen a Tu Ventana ! " 

To Sunset Magazine for " The Years " and " A Califor- 
nia Easter Mass " by Charles K. Field, for " The Camp- 
fire " by Margaret Adelaide Wilson, for " Song of Cradle- 
Making " by Constance Lindsay Skinner, for " Wireless " 
by Henry Anderson Lafler, for " Indirection " by Richard 
Realf, for " El Dorado: A Song" by Charles Mills Gayley, 
for " An Abalone Shell " by Grace MacGowan Cooke. 

To the Overland Monthly for "The Song" (from 
"Juanita") by Lauren E. Crane, for "My New Year's 
Guests " by Rollin M. Daggett, for " Night in Camp " and 
" Morning in Camp " by Herbert Bashford, for " In the 
Mojave" by Charles F. Lummis, for "Midsummer East 
and West " by Virna Woods and for " Evening " by 
Edward Pollock. 

To the owners of the following poems, originally printed 
in the Lark, " To Virginia " by Henry Atkins, " The Creed 
of Desire" by Bruce Porter, "A Song for the New Year" 
and " Ebb Tide at Noon " by Gelett Burgess. 

To Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, for " St. John of 
Nepomuc " by Ruth Comfort Mitchell, " Neither Spirit nor 
Bird " by Mary Austin, " Santa Barbara Beach " by Ridge- 
ley Torrence, " To My Mountain " by Mahdah Payson, " In 
the Mohave" by Patrick Orr, "The Water Ouzel" by 
Harriet Monroe, and " To the Summer Sun " by Marguerite 
Wilkinson. 

To the Los Angeles Graphic for the series of poems 
called " In a Garden " by Pauline Barrington, and for 
" With the Trees " by Marguerite Wilkinson. 

To the Boston Pilot for " Old Glory " by Emma Frances 
Dawson. 



xxii Acknowledgments 



To the ten-Bosch Company for " The Trail " from 
Field Notes by David Atkins. 

In every case where it has been possible, permis- 
sion to use poems has been secured not only from the 
owners of copyrights, but from the authors of poems. 
The following poems are used by special permission 
of the poets who made them : 

" The Mountain " by Edward Robeson Taylor. 

"Bells of San Juan Capistrano," "The Child Heart" 
and " Pescadero Pebbles " by Charles Keeler. 

" Iphigenia in Aulis " by Charles Phillips. 

" In Tehachapi " by David Starr Jordan. 

" In an Alameda Field " by Anna Catherine Markham. 

" Each in His Own Tongue " by William Herbert Car- 
ruth. 

" Just California " by John S. McGroarty. 

" When Zephyrs Blow " by Samuel Travers Clover. 

" In Carmel Bay " by Madge Clover. 

" When Almonds Bloom " by Milicent Washburn Shinn. 

"The Cauldron" by Francis Walker. 

" Wind of the South " by Jennie McBride Butler. 

" California Poppies " and " California " by Mary Caro- 
lyn Davies. 

" Yosemite Strophes " by Charles Wharton Stork. 

" At the Stevenson Fountain " by Wallace Irwin. 

" Gold-of-Ophir Roses " by Grace Atherton Dennen. 

To the Youth's Companion and to Warren Cheney, I am 
indebted for the use of " January," and to Herbert Heron 
and the Bookman for " To William Vaughn Moody." 



$toneer Voices 




O BLANCA VIRGEN A TU VENTANA! 

(A folksong of the days of the padres, translated by 
Eleanor Hague from the Spanish as sung by Francisca de 
la Guerra Dibblee of Santa Barbara) 

He. O fairest maiden, approach thy window ! 
Come to thy railing and turn thy ear, 
While gentle breezes waft of my singing 
The eternal echoes of thee to hear! 

She. Vain are these murmurs of all thy singing; 
The eternal echoes stir not my heart. 
A nest my heart is, of love and rapture ; 
I live in a heaven, I live in a heaven of love 
apart. 



He. Then to an eagle my life I'll alter, 
Up to thy heaven swift I shall fly. 

She. Then to a fish of the sea I'll change me, 
Hidden beneath the waves I'll lie. 

He. Within the ocean, I'll quickly seek thee, 
The waves will help me to find thee there. 

1 



Golden Songs of 



She. Then to a bird I'll turn my being, 

My flight shall take me, my flight shall take 
me from flower to flower. 



She. A live oak I'll be amid the boulders. 

He. As clinging ivy I'll clasp thee near. 

She. As a nun, hood and cowl I'll be wearing. 

He. Saintly confessor, thy voice I'll hear. 

She. Through convent portal, if thou shouldst 
enter, 
Dead thou wilt find me among the flowers. 

He. Among the flowers, if dead I find thee, 

To earth I'll turn me, to earth I'll turn me, and 
mine thou'lt be. 



The Golden State 



THE SONG 

(From "Juanita") 

To-night the stars are flowing gold ; 
The light South wind is blowing cold, 

Est a es mi luchaf 
The bright, bent moon is growing old, 

Escucha! 

Now test thy pride, and fearless prove, 
Now blest — my bride — my peerless dove, 

Juanita, 
Come rest beside me here, sweet love, 

Eres bendita! 

Through tall and silent trees there seems 
To fall the promise of fair dreams. 

Querida! 
How all the starry white air gleams. 

Mi vidal 

What dream, Juanita — fancied bliss — » 
Could seem so sweet a trance as this ? 

Dulcura, 
Or beam warm as thy glance or kiss ? 

Alma pur a! 



Golden Songs of 



What bliss to hold my fairy prize, 
One kiss ! yon star-gold, wary eyes, 

Que gloria! 
Saw this in far-old Paradise, 

Memorial 

But Eden held no face like thine ; 
Nor creed in perfect grace like mine. 

Que pascion! 
To read thy tender ways divine 

Es mi adoracion! 

Adieu ! I linger here too long ; 
For you my fingers sweep too strong. 

Que Diosa! 
Be true to singer and to song ! 

Adios ! Herm osa ! 

Lauren E. Crane. 



" THE DAYS OF 'FORTY-NINE " 

You are looking now on old Tom Moore, 

A relic of bygone days ; 
A bummer, too, they call me now, 

But what care I for praise ? 
For my heart is filled with the days of yore, 

And oft I do repine, 



The Golden State 



For the Days of Old, and the Days of Gold 
And the Days of 'Forty-nine. 

Refrain. 

Oh, my heart is filled with the days of yore 

And oft do I repine _ 

For the.Days of Old, the Days of Gold, 
/5\nd the Days of 'Forty-nine. 

-^/ 
I had comrades then who loved me well, 

A jovial saucy crew : 
There were some hard cases I must confess, 

But they all were brave and true ; 
.Who would never flinch, whate'er the pinch, 

Who never would fret nor whine, 
But like good old bricks they stood the kicks 

In the Days of 'Forty-nine. 

Refrain. 

Oh, my heart is filled with the days of yore, etc. 

There was Monte Pete — I'll ne'er forget 

The luck he always had. 
He would deal for you both day and night, 

So long as you had a scad. 
He would play you Draw, he would Ante sling, 

He would go you a hatful blind — 



Golden Songs of 



But in a game with Death Pete lost his breath 
In the Days of 'Forty-nine. 

Refrain. 

Oh, my heart is filled with the days of yore, etc. 

There was New York Jake a butcher boy, 

That was always a-getting tight; 
Whenever Jake got on a spree, 

He was spoiling for a fight. 
One day he ran against a knife 

In the hands of old Bob Cline — 
So over Jake we held a wake 

In the Days of 'Forty-nine. 



Refrain. 

Oh, my heart is filled with the days 



of yore, etc. 



There was Rackensack Jim, who could outroar 

A buffalo bull, you bet! 
He would roar all night, he would roar all day, 

And I b'lieve he's a-roaring yet ! 
One night he fell in a prospect hole — 

'Twas a roaring bad design — 
For in that hole he roared out his soul 

In the Days of 'Forty-nine. 

Refrain. 

Oh, my heart is filled with the days of yore, etc. 



The Golden State 



There was poor lame Ches, a hard old case 

Who never did repent. 
Ches never missed a single meal, 

Nor he never paid a cent. 
But poor lame Ches, like all the rest, 

Did to Death at last resign, 
For all in his bloom he went up the flume 

In the Days of 'Forty-nine. 

Refrain. 

Oh, my heart is filled with the days of yore, etc. 

And now my comrades all are gone, 

Not one remains to toast ; 
They have left me here in my misery, 

Like some poor wandering ghost. 
And as I go from place to place, 

Folks call me a " Travelling Sign/' 
Saying "There goes Tom Moore, a bummer, sure, 

From the Days of 'Forty-nine." 

Refrain. 

Oh, my heart is filled with the days of yore, 

And oft do I repine 
For the Days of Old, the Days of Gold, 

And the Days of 'Forty-nine. 

Author Unknown. 



8 Golden Songs of 



A BALLAD OF THE GOLD COUNTRY 

Deep in the hill the gold sand burned ; 

The brook ran yellow with its gleams ; 
Close by, the seekers slept, and turned 

And tossed in restless dreams. 

At dawn they waked. In friendly cheer 
Their dreams they told, by one, by one; 

And each man laughed the dreams to hear, 
But sighed when they were done. 

Visions of golden birds that flew, 
Of golden cloth piled fold on fold, 

Of rain which shone and filtered through 
The air in showers of gold; 

Visions of golden bells that rang, 

Of golden chariots that rolled, 
Visions of girls that danced and sang, 

With hair and robes of gold; 

Visions of golden stairs that led 

Down golden shafts of depths untold, 

Visions of golden skies that shed 
Gold light on seas of gold. 



The Golden State 



" Comrades, your dreams have many shapes,' 
Said one who, thoughtful, sat apart: 

" But I six nights have dreamed of grapes, 
One dream which fills my heart. 

" A woman meets me crowned with vine ; 

Great purple clusters fill her hands ; 
Her eyes divinely smile and shine, 

As beckoning she stands. 

" I follow her a single pace ; 

She vanishes, like light or sound, 
And leaves me in a vine-walled place, 

Where grapes pile all the ground." 

The comrades laughed : " We know thee by 
This fevered, drunken dream of thine." 

" Ha, ha," cried he, " never have I 
So much as tasted wine! 

" Now follow ye your luring shapes 

Of gold that climbs and gold that shines; 

I shall await my maid of grapes, 
And plant her trees and vines." 

All through the hills the gold sand burned ; 

All through the lands ran yellow streams 
To right, to left, the seekers turned, 

Led by the yellow gleams. 



10 Golden Songs of 



The ruddy hills were gulfed and strained; 

The rocky fields were torn and trenched; 
The yellow streams were drained and drained, 

Until their sources quenched. 

The gold came fast; the gold came free; 

The seekers shouted as they ran, 
" Now let us turn aside and see 

How fares that husbandman ! " 



a 



No mine as yet, my friends, to sell ; 

No bride to show," he smiling said : 
But here is water from my well, 

And here is wheaten bread. ,, 



"Is this thy tale?" they jeering cried; 

"Who was it followed luring shapes? 
And who has won? It seems she lied, 

,The maid of purple grapes ! " 

"When years have counted up to ten," 
He answered gaily, smiling still, 

" Come back once more, my merry men, 
And you shall have your fill 

"Of purple grapes and sparkling wine, 
And figs and nectarines like flames, 

And sweeter eyes than maid's shall shine 
In welcome at your names." 



The Golden State ll 

In scorn they heard; to scorn they laughed 
The water and the wheaten bread; 

" We'll wait until a better draught 
For thy bride's health,' ' they said. 



The years ran fast. The seekers went 
All up, all down the golden lands : 

The streams grew pale; the hills were spent; 
Slow ran the golden sands. 

And men were beggars in a day, 

For swift to come was swift to go; 

What chance had got chance flung away 
On one more chance's throw. 

And bleached and seamed and riven plains, 
And tossed and tortured rocks like ghosts, 

And blackened lines and charred remains, 
And crumbling chimney posts, 

For leagues their ghastly records spread 
Of youth and years and fortunes gone, 

Like graveyards whose sad, living dead 
Had hopeless journeyed on. 



The years had counted up to ten : 

One night, as it grew chill and late, 

The husbandman marked beggarmen 
Who leaned upon his gate. 



12 Golden Songs of 

"Ho here! good men," he eager cried, 
Before the wayfarers could speak; 

" This is my vineyard. Far and wide 
For laborers I seek. 

"This year has doubled on last year; 

The fruit breaks down my vines and trees ; 
Tarry and help till wine runs clear, 

And ask what price you please." 

Purple and red, to left, to right, 

For miles the gorgeous vintage blazed; 

And all day long and into night 
The vintage song was raised. 

And wine ran free all thirst beyond, 
And no hand stinted bread or meat ; 

And maids were gay and men were fond, 
And hours were swift and sweet. 

The beggarmen they worked with will; 

Their hands were thin, and lithe, and strong ; 
Each day they ate two good days' fill, 

They had been starved so long. 

The vintage drew to end. New wine 

From thousand casks was dripping slow, 

And bare and yellow fields gave sign 
For vintagers to go. 



The Golden State 13 



The beggarmen received their pay, 

Bright, yellow gold, — twice their demand; 

The master, as they turned away, 
Held out his brawny hand, 

And said : " Good men, this time next year 
My vintage will be bigger still; 

Come back, if chance should bring you near, 
And it should suit your will." 

The beggars nodded. But at night 

They said : " No more we go that way ; 

He did not know us then ; he might 
Upon another day ! " 

Helen Hunt Jackson. 



MY NEW YEAR'S GUESTS 

(Midnight, December 31, 1881, in Virginia City. On 
the wall photographs of five hundred California pioneers) 

The winds come cold from the Southward, with 

incense of fir and pine, 
And the flying clouds grow darker as they halt and 

fall in line. 
The valleys that reach the deserts, the mountains 

that greet the clouds, 



14 Golden Songs of 

Lie bare in the arms of Winter, which the gather- 
ing night enshrouds. 
The leafless sage on the hillside, the willows low 

down the stream, 
And the sentry rocks above us have faded all as a 

dream. 
And the fall of the stamp grows fainter, the voices 

of night sing low, 
And spelled from labor the miner toils through the 

drifting snow. 
As I sit alone in my chamber, this last of the dying 

year, 
Dim shades of the past surround me, and faint 

through the storm I hear 
Old tales of the castles builded under shelving rock 

and pine, 
Of the bearded men and stalwart, I greeted in 'forty- 
nine: 
The giants with hopes audacious, the giants with 

iron limb, 
The giants who journeyed Westward, when the 

trails were new and dim : 
The giants who felled the forests, made pathways 

over the snows, 
And planted the vine and fig-tree where the manza- 

nita grows ; 
Who swept down the mountain gorges, and painted 

the endless night 



The Golden State 15 

With their cabins rudely fashioned, and their camp 

fires' ruddy light; 
Who builded great towns and cities, who swung 

back the Golden Gate, 
And hewed from a mighty ashlar the form of a 

sovereign state; 
Who came like a flood of waters to a thirsty desert 

plain 
And where there had been no reapers grew valleys 

of golden grain. 
Nor wonder that this strange music sweeps in from 

the silent past, 
And comes with the storm this evening and blends 

into strains with the blast ; 
Nor wonder that through the darkness should enter 

a spectral throng, 
And gather around my table with the old time smile 

and song; 
For there on the wall before me, in a frame of gilt 

and brown, 
With a chain of years suspended, old faces are 

looking down; 
Five hundred all grouped together — five hundred 

old Pioneers — 
Now list as I raise the taper and trace the steps of 

the years; 
Behold this face near the center; we met ere his 

locks were gray, 



16 Golden Songs of 

His purse like his heart was open; he struggles for 

bread today. 
To this one the fates were cruel, but he bore his 

burden well, 
And the willow bends in sorrow by the wayside 

where he fell. 
Great losses and grief crazed this one; great riches 

turned this one's head ; 
And a faithless wife wrecked this one — he lives but 

were better dead. 
Now closer the light on this face; 'twas wrinkled 

when we were young; 
His touch drew our footsteps Westward, his name 

was on every tongue. 
Rich was he in land and kindness, but the human 

deluge came, 
And left him at last with nothing, but death and 

deathless fame. 
'Twas a kindly hand that grouped them, these faces 

of other years; 
The rich and the poor together, — the hopes and the 

smiles and tears 
Of some of the fearless hundreds who went like the 

knights of old, 
The banner of empire bearing to the land of blue 

and gold. 
For years have I watched these shadows, as others 

I know have done, 



The Golden State 17 

As death touched their lips with silence, I have 

draped them one by one, 
Till, seen where the dark-plumed angel has mingled 

here and there, 
The brows I have flecked with sable cloud, the living 

everywhere. 
Darker and darker and darker these shadows will 

yearly grow 
As changing the seasons bring us the bud and the 

falling snow; 
And soon — let me not invoke it! — the final prayer 

will be said, 
And strangers will write the record, "the last of 

the group is dead." 
And then — but why stand here gazing? A gather- 
ing storm in my eyes 
Is mocking the weeping tempest that billows the 

midnight skies; 
And, stranger still, is it fancy? — Are my senses 

dazed and weak ? 
The shadowy lips are moving as if they would ope 

and speak, 
And I seem to hear low whispers, and catch the 

echo of strains 
That rose from the golden gulches, and followed the 

moving trains, 
The scent of the sage and desert, the path on the 

rocky height, 



18 Golden Songs of 

The shallow graves by the roadside, all, all have 

come back tonight ; 
And the mildewed years, like stubble, I trample 

under my feet; 
And drink again at the fountain when the wine of 

life was sweet; 
And I stand once more exalted, where the white 

pine frets the skies 
And dream in the winding canyon where early the 

twilight dies. 
Now the eyes look down in sadness, the pulse of 

the year beats low ; 
The storm has been awed to silence; the muffled 

hands of the snow, 
Like the noiseless feet of mourners, are spreading 

a pallid sheet 
O'er the heart of dead December, and glazing the 

shroud with sleet. 
Hark! the bells are chiming midnight, the storm 

bends its listening ear, 
While the moon looks through the cloud rifts and 

blesses the new-born year. 
Bar closely the curtained windows, shut the light 

from every pane, 
While free from the worldly intrusion and curious 

eyes profane 
I take from its leathern casket a dented old cup of 

tin, 



The Golden State 19 

More precious to me than silver, and blessing the 

draught within, 
I drink alone and in silence to the " Builders of the 

[West"— 
"Long life to the hearts still beating, and peace 

to the hearts at rest ! " 

Rollin M. Daggett. 



EVENING 

The air is chill, and the day grows late, 

And the clouds come in through the Golden Gate ; 

Phantom fleets they seem to me, 

From a shoreless and unsounded sea; 

Their shadowy spars and misted sails, 

Unshattered, have weathered a thousand gales ; 

Slow wheeling, lo ! in squadrons gray, 

They part, and hasten along the bay; 

Where the hills of Saucelito swell, 

Many in gloom may shelter well, 

And others — behold — unchallenged pass 

By the silent guns of Alcatraz : 

No greetings of thunder and flame exchange 

The armed isle and the cruisers strange. 

Their meteor flags, so widely blown, 

[Were blazoned in a land unknown; 



20 Golden Songs of 

So charmed from war or wind or tide, 
Along the quiet wave they glide. 

What bear these ships ? — what news, what freight 

Do they bring us through the Golden Gate? 

Sad echoes to words in gladness spoken, 

And withered hopes to the poor heart-broken. 

Oh, how many a venture we 

Have rashly sent to the shoreless sea! 

How many an hour have you and I, 

Sweet friend, in sadness seen go by, 

While our eager, longing thoughts were roving 

Over the waste for something loving 

Something rich and chaste and kind, 

To brighten and bless a lonely mind ; 

And only waited to behold 

Ambition's gems, affection's gold, 

Return as " remorse," and " a broken vow " 

In such ships of mist as I see now. 

The air is chill and the day grows late 

And the clouds come in through the Golden Gate, 

Freighted with sorrow, heavy with woe ; — 

But these shapes that cluster dark and low 

Tomorrow shall be all a-glow ! 

In the blaze of the coming morn these mists, 

Whose weight my heart in vain resists, 

Will brighten, and shine and soar to heaven, 



_ie Golden State 21 

In thin white robes like souls forgiven; 
For Heaven is kind, and everything, 
As well as a winter, has a spring. 
So praise to God ! Who brings the day 
That shines our regrets and fears away ; 
For the blessed morn I can watch and wait, 
While the clouds come in through the Golden Gate. 

Edward Pollock. 



INDIRECTION 

Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle 
suggestion is fairer; 

Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that 
clasps it is rarer; 

Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that pre- 
cedes it is sweeter; 

And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning out- 
mastered the meter. 

Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth 

the growing; 
Never a river that flows, but a majesty scepters the 

flowing; 
Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger 

than he did enfold him, 
Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer 

hath foretold him. 



22 Golden Songs of 

Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter is hinted 

and hidden ; 
Into the statue that breathes., the soul of the sculptor 

is bidden; 
Under the joy that is felt, lie the infinite issues of 

feeling ; 
Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns 

the revealing. 

Great are the symbols of being, but that which is 

symboled is greater; 
Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward 

creator ; 
Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the 

gift stands the giving ; 
Back of the hand that received thrill the sensitive 

nerves of receiving. 

Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by 

the doing; 
The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the 

heart of the wooing; 
And up from the pits where these shiver and up 

from the heights where those shine 
Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the 

essence of life is divine. 

Richard Realf. 



The Golden State 23 



EL CANELO 

Now saddle El Canelo! the freshening wind of 
morn, 

Down in the flowery vega, is stirring through the 
corn; 

The thin smoke of the ranches grows red with com- 
ing day 

'And the steed is fiercely stamping, in haste to be 
away. 

My glossy-limbed Canelo, thy neck is curved in 

pride, 
Thy slender ears pricked forward, thy nostrils 

straining wide ; 
And as thy quick neigh greets me and I catch thee 

by the mane, 
I'm off with the winds of morning, — the chieftain 

of the plain! 

I feel the swift air whirring and see along our track, 

From the flinty-paved sierra, the sparks go stream- 
ing back ; 

And I clutch my rifle closer as we sweep the dark 
defile, 

Where the red guerillas ambush for many a lonely 
mile. 



24 Golden Songs of 

They reach not El Canelo; with the swiftness of a 

dream 
We've passed the bleak Nevada, and San Fernan- 

do's stream; 
But where, on sweeping gallop, my bullet backward 

sped, 
The keen-eyed mountain vultures will wheel above 

the dead. 

On! on, my brave Canelo! we've dashed the sand 
and snow 

From peaks upholding heaven, from deserts far 
below, — 

We've thundered through the forest, while the crack- 
ling branches rang, 

And trooping elks, affrighted, from lair and covert 
sprang. 

We've swum the swollen torrent — we've distanced 
in the race 

The baying wolves of Pinos, that panted with the 
chase ; 

And still thy mane streams backward at every thrill- 
ing bound, 

And still thy treasured hoof-stroke beats with its 
morning sound. 

The seaward winds are wailing through Santa 
Barbara's pines, 



The Golden State 25 

And like a sheathless sabre, the far Pacific shines; 
Hold to thy speed, my arrow, at nightfall thou shalt 

lave 
Thy hot and smoking haunches beneath its silver 

wave. 

My head upon thy shoulder along the sloping sand, 

We'll sleep as trusty brothers, from out the moun- 
tain land; 

The pines will sound in answer to the surges on 
the shore, 

And in our dreams, Canelo, we'll make the journey 
o'er. Bayard Taylor. 



EL VAQUERO 

Tinged with the blood of Aztec lands, 
Sphinx-like the tawny herdsman stands, 
A coiled reata in his hands. 
Devoid of hope, devoid of fear, 
Half brigand and half cavalier, 
This Helot, with imperial grace, 
Wears ever on his tawny face 

A sad, defiant look of pain. 
Left by the fierce iconoclast 
A living fragment of the past, — 

Greek of the Greeks he must remain. 

Lucius Harwood Foote. 



"lottos of tfje #reat dinger* 




CALIFORNIA 

Was it the sigh and shiver of the leaves? 
Was it the murmur of the meadow brook, 
That in and out the reeds and water weeds 
Slipped silverly, and on their tremulous keys 
Uttered her many melodies? Or voice 
Of the far sea, red with the sunset gold, 
That sang within her shining shores, and sang 
Within the Gate, that in the sunset shone 
A gate of fire against the outer world? 

For ever as I turned the magic page 

Of that old song the old, blind singer sang 

Unto the world when it and song were young — a 

The ripple of the reeds, or odorous, 

Soft sigh of leaves or voice of the far sea — 

A 1 mystical, low murmur, tremulous 

Upon the wind, came in the musk of rose, 

The salt breath of the waves, and far, faint smell 

Of laurel up the slopes of Tamalpais. 

" Am I less fair, am I less fair than these, 

Daughter of far-off seas? 
Daughter of far-off shores — bleak over-blown 

29 



30 Golden Songs of 

With foam of fretful tides, with wail and moan 
Of waves that toss wild hands, that clasp and beat 
Wild desolate hands above the lonely sands, 
Printed no more with pressure of their feet : 
That chase no more the light feet flying swift 

Up golden sands, nor lift 
Foam fingers white unto their garments' hem, 

And flowing hair of them. 

"For these are dead: the fair, great queens are 

dead, 
The long hair's gold a dust the wind bloweth 

Wherever it may list; 

The curved lips, that kissed 
Heroes and kings of men, a dust that breath, 
Nor speech, nor laughter, ever quickeneth; 

And all the glory sped 
From the large, marvellous eyes, the light whereof 
Wrought wonder in their hearts — desire and love ! 

And wrought not any good : 
But strife, and curses of the gods, and flood, 

And fire and battle-death! 

Am I less fair, less fair, 

Because that my hands bear 
Neither a sword, nor any flaming brand 
To blacken and make desolate my land, 
And on my brows are leaves of olive boughs, 

And in mine arms a dove? 



The Golden State 31 

" Sea-born and goddess, blossom of the foam, 
Pale Aphrodite, shadowy as a mist 

Not any sun hath kissed ! 

Tawny of limb I roam, 
The dusk of forests dark within my hair; 

The far Yosemite, 
For garment and for covering of me, 

Wove the white foam and mist, 
The amber and the rose and amethyst 
Of her wild fountains shaken loose in air. 
And I am of the hills and of the sea, 
Strong with the strength of my great hills, and calm 
With calm of the fair sea, whose billowy gold 
Girdles the land whose queen and love I am ! 

Lo ! am I less than thou, 
That with a sound of lyres and harp-playing, 

Not any voice doth sing 
The beauty of mine eyelids and my breast 
Nor hymn in all my fair and gracious ways, 

And lengths of golden days, 
The measure and the music of my praise? 

"Ah, what indeed is this 
Old land beyond the seas, that ye should miss 
For her the grace and majesty of mine? 

Are not the fruit and vine 
Fair on my hills, and in my vales the rose ? 

The palm-tree and the pine 



32 Golden Songs of 

Strike hands together under the same skies 

In every wind that blows. 

What clearer heavens can shine 
Above the land whereon the shadow lies 
Of her dead glory and her slaughtered kings 

And lost, evanished gods? 

Upon my fresh green sods 
No king has walked to curse and desolate : 
But in the valley Freedom sits and sings, 

And on the heights above; 
Upon her brows the leaves of olive boughs, 

And in her arms a dove ; 
And the great hills are pure, undesecrate, 

White with their snows untrod ! 
And mighty with the presence of their God ! 

" Hearken, how many years 
I sat alone, I sat alone and heard 

Only the silence stirred 
By wind and leaf, by clash of grassy spears, 
And singing bird that called to singing bird, 

Heard but the savage tongue 
Of my brown, savage children, that among 
The hills and valleys chased the buck and doe, 

And round the wigwam fires 
Chanted wild songs of their wild savage sires, 
And danced their wild weird dances to and fro, 
And wrought their beaded robes of buffalo. 



The Golden State 33 

Day following upon day, 
Saw but the panther crouched upon the limb, 

Smooth serpents, swift and slim, 
Slip through the reeds and grasses, and the bear 

Crush through his tangled lair 
Of chaparral upon the startled prey! 

" Listen, how I have seen 
Flash of strange fires in gorge and black ravine ; 
Heard the sharp clang of steel, that came to drain 

The mountain's golden vein — 
And laughed and sang, and sang and laughed again, 
Because that ' Now,' I said, ' I shall be known ! 

I shall not sit alone; 
But reach my hands unto my sister lands ! 

And they, will they not turn 
Old, wondering dim eyes to me, and yearn — 

Aye, they will yearn, in sooth, 
To my glad beauty and my glad, fresh youth ! ' 

" What matters though the morn 
Redden upon my singing fields of corn! 
What matters though the wind's unresting feet 

Ripple the golden wheat, 

And my vales run with wine, 

And on these hills of mine 
The orchard boughs droop heavy with ripe fruit? 

When with nor song of lute 



34 Golden Songs of 

Nor lyre, doth any singer chant and sing 

Me, in my life's fair spring: 
The matin song of me in my young day? 
But all my lays and legends fade away 
From lake and mountain to the farther hem 
Of sea, and there be none to gather them. 

" Lo ! I have waited long ! 
How longer yet must my strung harp be dumb 

Ere its great master come? 
Till the fair singer comes to wake the strong, 
Rapt chords of it unto the new, glad song! 

Him a diviner speech 

My song birds wait to teach: 

The secrets of the field 

My blossoms will not yield 

To other hands than his; 

And lingering for this, 
My laurels lend the glory of their boughs 

To crown no narrower brows. 
For on his lips must wisdom sit with youth ; 
And in his eyes, and on the lids thereof, 

The light of a great love — 

And on his forehead, truth ! " 

Was it the wind, or the soft sigh of leaves, 
Or sound of singing waters? So, I looked, 
And saw the silvery ripples of the brook, 



The Golden State 35 

The fruit upon the hills, the waving trees, 
The mellow fields of harvest; saw the Gate 
Burn in the sunset : the thin thread of mist, 
Creep white across the Saucelito hills ; 
Till the day darkened down the ocean rim, 
The sunset purple slipped from Tamalpais, 
And bay and sky were bright with sudden stars ! 

Ina Coolbrith. 



WHEN THE GRASS SHALL COVER ME 

When the grass shall cover me, 
Head to foot where I am lying, — 
When not any wind that blows, 
Summer-blooms nor winter-snows, 
Shall awake me to your sighing: 
Close above me as you pass, 
You will say, " How kind she was," 
You will say, "How true she was," 
When the grass grows over me. 

When the grass shall cover me, 
Holden close to earth's warm bosom, — ■ 

While I laugh, or weep, or sing, 

Nevermore for anything, 
You will find in blade and blossom, 

Sweet, small voices odorous, 

Tender pleaders in my cause, 



36 Golden Songs of 

That shall speak me as I was — 
When the grass grows over me. 

When the grass shall cover me ! 
Ah, beloved, in my sorrow 

Very patient, I can wait, 

Knowing that, or soon or late, 
There will dawn a clearer morrow: 

When your heart will moan: "Alas! 

Now I know how true she was; 

Now I know how dear she was " — 

When the grass grows over me! 

Ina Coolbrith. 



THE ANGELUS 
(Heard at the Mission Dolores in San Francisco, 1868) 

Bells of the past, whose long forgotten music 

Still fills the wide expanse, 
Tingeing the sober twilight of the present 

With color of romance! 

I hear your call, and see the sun descending 

On rock and wave and sand, 
As down the coast the Mission voices blending 

Girdle the heathen land. 



The Golden State 37 

Within the circle of your incantation 

No blight nor mildew falls; 
Nor fierce unrest, nor lust, nor low ambition 

Passes those airy walls. 

Borne on the swell of your long waves receding, 

I touch the farther Past, — 
I see the dying glow of Spanish glory, 

The sunset dream, and last ! 

Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers, 

The white Presidio; 
The swart commander in his leathern jerkin, 

The priest in stole of snow. 

Once more I see Portala's cross uplifting 

Above the setting sun; 
!And past the headland, northward, slowly drifting, 

The freighted galleon. 

O solemn bells! whose consecrated masses 

Recall the faith of old, — 
O tinkling bells ! that thrilled with twilight music 

The spiritual fold. 

Your voices break and falter in the darkness, — 
Break, falter, and are still; 



38 Golden Songs of 

And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending, 
The sun sinks from the hill ! 

Bret Harte. 



THE REVEILLE 

Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, 

And of armed men the hum; 
Lo ! a nation's hosts have gathered 
Round the quick-alarming drum, — 
Saying, " Come, 
Freemen, come! 
Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick-alarm- 
ing drum. 

" Let me of my heart take counsel : 

War is not of life the sum; 
Who shall stay and reap the harvest 
When the autumn days are done?" 
But the drum 
Echoed: "Come! 
Death shall reap the braver harvest," said the sol- 
emn-sounding drum. 

" But when won, the coming battle, 

What of profit springs therefrom? 
What if conquest, subjugation, 



The Golden State 39 

— —— ■ — —————— IM !!■!!■ II I I ■ ■ ■■! Willi MW MWWWMWWM— — ■ 

Even greater ills become?" 
But the drum 
Answered, "Come, 
You must do the sum to prove it," said the Yankee- 
answering drum. 

"What, if 'mid the cannon's thunder, 

Whistling shot and bursting bomb, 
When my brothers fall around me, 

Should my heart grow cold and numb?" 
But the drum 
Answered, " Come ! 
Better there in death united than in life a recreant, — 
Come!" 

Thus they answered — hoping, fearing, 
Some in faith, and doubting some — 
Till a triumph-voice proclaiming, 
Said : " My chosen people, come ! " 
Then the drum 
Lo ! was dumb ; 
For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, an- 
swered, " Lord, we come ! " 

Bret Harte. 



40 Golden Songs of 

WHAT THE BULLET SANG 

O joy of creation, 
To be! 

rapture, to fly 
And be free ! 

Be the battle lost or won, 

Though its smoke shall hide the sun, 

1 shall find my love — the one 
Born for me ! 

I shall know him where he stands 

All alone, 
With the power in his hands 

Not o'erthrown; 
I shall know him by his face, 
By his godlike front and grace; 
I shall hold him for a space 

All my own ! 

It is he — O my love! 

So bold! 
It is I — all thy love 

Foretold ! 
It is I — O love, what bliss ! 
Dost thou answer to my kiss ? 
O sweetheart ! what is this 

Lieth there so cold? 

Bret Harte. 



The Golden State 41 

BELLS OF SAN GABRIEL 

Thine was the corn and the wine, 

The blood of the grape that nourished; 
The blossom and fruit of the vine 

That was heralded far away. 
These were thy gifts; and thine, 

When the vine and the fig-tree flourished, 
The promise of peace and of glad increase 

Forever and ever and aye. 
What then wert thou, and what art now? 

Answer me, O, I pray! 

And every note of every bell 

Sang Gabriel ! rang Gabriel ! 
In the tower that is left the tale to tell 

Of Gabriel, the Archangel. 

Oil of the olive was thine; 

Flood of the wine-press flowing; 
Blood o' the Christ was the wine — 

Blood o' the Lamb that was slain. 
Thy gifts were fat o' the kine 

Forever coming and going 
Over the hills, the thousand hills, 

Their lowing a soft refrain. 
What then wert thou, and what art now ? 

Answer me, once again! 



42 Golden Songs of 

And every note of every bell 
Sang Gabriel! rang Gabriel! 

In the tower that is left the tale to tell 
Of Gabriel, the Archangel. 

Seed o' the corn was thine — 

Body of Him thus broken 
And mingled with blood o' the vine — 

The bread and the wine of life; 
Out of the good sunshine 

They were given to thee as a token — 
The body of Him, and the blood of Him, 

When the gifts of God were rife. 
What then wert thou, and what art now, 

After the weary strife? 

And every note of every bell 
Sang Gabriel! rang Gabriel! 

In the tower that is left the tale to tell 
Of Gabriel, the Archangel. 

Where are they now, O bells? 

Where are the fruits o' the Mission? 
Garnered, where no one dwells 

Shepherd and floek are fled. 
O'er the Lord's vineyard swells 

The tide that with fell perdition 



The Golden State 43 

Sounded their doom and fashioned their tomb 

And buried them with the dead. 
What then wert thou, and what art now? — 

The answer is still unsaid. 

And every note of every bell 

Sang Gabriel! rang Gabriel! 
In the tower that is left the tale to tell 

Of Gabriel, the Archangel. 

•Where are they now, O tower ! 

The locusts and wild honey? 
Where is the sacred dower 

That the bride of Christ was given? 
Gone to the builders of power, 

The misers and minters of money; 
Gone for the greed that is their creed — ■ 

And these in the land have thriven. 
What then wert thou, and what art now, 

And wherefore hast thou striven? 

And every note of every bell 

Sang Gabriel ! rang Gabriel ! 
In the tower that is left the tale to tell 

Of Gabriel, the Archangel. 

Charles Warren Stoddard. 



44 Golden Songs of 



IN THE STATES 

With half a heart I wander here 

As from an age gone by, 
A brother — yet though young in years, 

An elder brother, I. 

You speak another tongue than mine, 
Though both were English born. 

I toward the night of time decline, 
You mount into the morn. 

Youth shall grow great and strong and free, 

But age must still decay: 
Tomorrow for the States — for me, 

England and Yesterday. 

Robert Louis Stevenson. 



IN YOSEMITE VALLEY* 

Sound! sound! sound! 
O colossal walls as crown'd 
In one eternal thunder! 

Sound! sound! sound! 



*Permission to use the poems by Joaquin Miller secured from 
The Harr Wagner Publishing Co., San Francisco, California, pub- 
lishers of Joaquin Miller's complete works. 



The Golden State 45 

O ye oceans overhead, 
While we walk, subdued in wonder, 
In the ferns and grasses, under 
And beside the swift Merced! 

Fret! fret! fret! 
Streaming, sounding banners, set 
On the giant granite castles 
In the clouds and in the snow ! 
But the foe he comes not yet, — 
We are loyal, valiant vassals, 
And we touch the trailing tassels 
Of the banners far below. 

Surge! surge! surge! 
From the white sierra's verge, 
To the very valley blossom. 

Surge ! surge ! surge ! 
Yet the song bird builds a home, 
And the mossy branches cross them, 
And the tasseled tree-tops toss them, 
In the clouds of falling foam. 

Sweep ! sweep ! sweep ! 
O ye heaven-born and deep 
In one dread, unbroken chorus ! 
We may wonder or may weep, — 



46 Golden Songs of 

We may wait on God before us; 
[We may shout or lift a hand, — 
We may bow down or deplore us, 
But may never understand. 

Beat! beat! beat! 
We advance but would retreat 
From this restless, broken breast 
Of the earth in a convulsion. 
We would rest, but dare not rest, 
For the angel of expulsion 
From this Paradise below 
Waves us onward and — we go. 

Joaquin Miller, 



LYRICS 

(Written in London in 1871) 

Come to my sun land! Come with me 
To the land I love; where the sun and sea 
Are wed forever: where palm and pine 
Are rilled with singers ; where tree and vine 
Are voiced with prophets ! O come, and you 
Shall sing a song with the seas that swirl 
And kiss their hands to the cold white girl, 
To the maiden moon in her mantle of blue. 

Joaquin Miller. 



The Golden State 47 

Room ! Room to turn round in, to breathe and be 

free, 
And to grow to be giant, to sail as at sea 
With the speed of the wind on a steed with his mane 
To the wind, without pathway, or route, or a rein. 
Room ! Room to be free where the white-bordered 

sea 
Blows a kiss to a brother as boundless as he; 
And to east and to west, to the north and the sun, 
Blue skies and brown grasses are welded as one, 
And the buffalo come like a cloud on the plain, 
Pouring on like the tide of a storm-driven main, 
And the lodge of the hunter to friend or to foe 
Offers rest; and unquestioned you come or you go. 
My plains of America! Seas of wild lands! 
From a land in the seas in a raiment of foam, 
That has reached to a stranger the welcome of home, 
I turn to you, lean to you, lift you my hands. 

Joaquin Miller, 



ON A PICTURE OF MOUNT SHASTA 1 
BY KEITH* 

Two craggy slopes, sheer down on either hand, 
Fall to a cleft, dark and confused with pines. 

* Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 
Mifflin Company. 



48 Golden Songs of 

Out of their sombre shade — one gleam of light — 
Escaping toward us like a hurrying child, 
Half laughing, half afraid, a white brook runs. 
The fancy tracks it back through the thick gloom 
Of crowded trees, immense, mysterious 
As monoliths of some colossal temple, 
Dusky with incense, chill with endless time: 
Through their dim arches chants the distant wind, 
Hollow and vast, and ancient oracles 
Whisper and wait to be interpreted. 
Far up the gorge denser and denser grows 
The forest; columns lie with writhen roots in air, 
And across open glades the sunbeams slant 
To touch the vanishing wing-tips of shy birds; 
Till from a mist-rolled valley soar the slopes, 
Blue-hazy, dense with pines to the verge of snow, 
Up into cloud. Suddenly parts the cloud, 
And lo! in heaven — as pure as very snow, 
Uplifted like a solitary world — 
A star, grown all at once distinct and clear, — 
The white earth-spirit, Shasta ! Calm, alone, 
Silent it stands, cold in the crystal air, 
White-bosomed sister of the stainless dawn, 
With whom the clouds hold converse, and the storm 
Rests there, and stills its tempest into snow. 

Once — you remember ? — we beheld that vision, 
But busy days recalled us, and the whole 



The Golden State 49 

Fades now among my memories like a dream. 

The distant thing is all incredible, 

And the dim past as if it had not been. 

Our world flees from us ; only the one point, 

The unsubstantial moment, is our own. 

We are but as the dead, save that swift mote 

Of conscious life. Then the great artist comes, 

Commands the chariot wheels of Time to stay, 

Summons the distant, as by some austere 

Grand gesture of a mighty sorcerer's wand, 

And our whole world again becomes our own. 

So we escape the petty tyranny 

Of the incessant hour; pure thought evades 

Its customary bondage, and the mind 

Is lifted up, watching the moon-like globe. 

How should a man be eager or perturbed 
Within this calm? How should he greatly care 
For reparation, or redress of wrong, — 
To scotch the liar, or spurn the fawning knave, 
Or heed the babble of the ignoble crew? 
Seest thou yon blur far up the icy slope, 
Like a man's footprint ? Half thy little town 
Might hide there, or be buried in what seems 
From yonder cliff a curl of feathery snow. 
Still the far peak would keep its frozen calm, 
Still at the evening on its pinnacle 
Would the one tender touch of sunset dwell, 



50 Golden Songs of 

And o'er it nightlong wheel the silent stars. 
So the great globe rounds on, — mountains and vales, 
Forests, waste stretches of gaunt rock and sand, 
Shore, and the swaying ocean, — league on league ; 
And blossoms open, and are sealed in frost; 
And babes are born, and men are laid to rest. 
What is this breathing atom, that his brain 
Should build or purpose aught or aught desire, 
But stand a moment in amaze and awe, 
Rapt on the wonderfulness of the world? 

Edward Rowland Sill. 



THE MAN WITH THE HOE* 

(Written after seeing Millet's world-famous painting) 

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans 
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 
The emptiness of ages in his face, 
And on his back the burden of the world. 
Who made him dead to rapture and despair, 
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, 
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? 
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? 
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow ? 



* Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Double- 
day, Page & Company. 



The Golden State 51 

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain ? 

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave 

To have dominion over sea and land; 

To trace the stars and search the heavens for power ; 

To feel the passion of Eternity? 

Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns 

And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? 

Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf 

There is no shape more terrible than this — 

More tongued with censure of the world's blind 

greed — 
More filled with signs and portents for the soul — 
More fraught with menace to the universe. 

What gulfs between him and the seraphim! 

Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him 

Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? 

What the long reaches of the peaks of song, 

The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? 

Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; 

Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; 

Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, 

Plundered, profaned and disinherited, 

Cries protest to the Judges of the World, 

A protest that is also prophecy. 

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,. 
Is this the handiwork you give to God, 



52 Golden Songs of 

This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? 

How will you ever straighten up this shape, 

Touch it again with immortality; 

Give back the upward looking and the light ; 

Rebuild in it the music and the dream; 

Make right the immemorial infamies, 

Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? 

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 
How will the future reckon with this Man? 
How answer his brute question in that hour 
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? 
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings — 
With those who shaped him to the thing he is — 
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God, 
After the silence of the centuries ? 

Edwin Mark ham. 



THE JOY OF THE HILLS * 

I ride on the mountain tops, I ride ; 
I have found my life and am satisfied. 
Onward I ride in the blowing oats, 
Checking the field-lark's rippling notes — 



*Used by permission cf, and by special arrangement with, Double- 
day, Page & Company. 



The Golden State 53 

Lightly I sweep 

From steep to steep: 
Over my head through the branches high 
Come glimpses of a rushing sky; 
The tall oats brush my horse's flanks; 
Wild poppies crowd on the sunny banks ; 
A bee booms out of the scented grass; 
A jay laughs with me as I pass. 

I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forget 

Life's hoard of regret — 

All the terror and pain 

Of the chafing chain. 

Grind on, O cities, grind: 

I leave you a blur behind. 
I am lifted elate — the skies expand : 
Here the world's heaped gold is a pile of sand. 
Let them weary and work in their narrow 

walls : 
I ride with the voices of waterfalls! 

I swing on as one in a dream — I swing 
Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing ! 
The world is gone like an empty word : 
My body's a bough in the wind, my heart a 
bird! 

Edwin Markham. 



54 Golden Songs of 



THE HEART'S RETURN * 

When darkened hours come crowding fast, 
f A thought — and all the dark is past. 
For I am back a boy again, 
Knee-deep in heading barley in a Mendocino glen. 

I can not ever be so sad 
But one thing still will make me glad — 
That hid spring in the Suisun hills: 
My heart keeps going back to it thru all the earthly 
ills. 

How often when the brood of care 
Would hold me in a hopeless snare, 
My soul springs winged and away, 
Remembering that wild duck's nest above Benicia 
bay. 

Or when night finds me toiling still, 
I am back again on the greening hill, 
A shepherd boy at set of sun, 
Folding his happy sheep and knowing all his tasks 
are done. 

Edwin Markham. 



•Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Double- 
day, Page & Company. 



The Golden State 55 



THE LAST DAYS 

The russet leaves of the sycamore 

Lie at last on the valley floor — 

By the autumn wind swept to and fro 

Like ghosts in a tale of long ago. 

Shallow and clear the Carmel glides 

Where the willows droop on its vine-walled sides. 

The bracken rust is red on the hill; 

The pines stand brooding, somber and still; 

Gray are the cliffs, and the waters gray, 

Where the sea-gulls dip to the sea-born spray. 

Sad November, lady of rain, 

Sends the goose-wedge over again. 

Wilder now, for the verdure's birth, 
Falls the sunlight over the earth; 
Kildees call from the fields where now 
The banding blackbirds follow the plow; 
Rustling poplar and brittle weed 
Whisper low to the river-reed. 

Days departing linger and sigh : 
Stars come soon to the quiet sky; 
Buried voices, intimate, strange, 
Cry to body and soul of change; 



56 Golden Songs of 

Beauty, eternal fugitive, 

Seeks the home that we cannot give. 

George Sterling. 



THE VOICE OF THE DOVE 

Hear I the mourning-dove, 
As now the swallow floats 
Low o'er the shadowed oats? 

Soft as the voice of love, 
Hear I her slow and supplicating notes ? 

O fugitive! O lone! 

O burden pure and strong 
That summer noons prolong! 

O link in music shown 
Between the silence and an angel's song! 

The dulcimer and lute 

Hoard not so swoonless woe. 
What grief of long ago 

Would now thy tones transmute 
To what we sought afar and could not know ? 

Thy yearnings yet elude 
Our quest and scrutiny, 
Tho mortals echo thee 
Thy moan in solitude 
For dreams that are not nor shall ever be. 



The Golden State 57 

So broken waters hold 
A voice to sorrow set — 
A world's foreknown regret, 
Immutable, untold. 
So seas remember, tho our souls forget. 

George Sterling. 



THE BLACK VULTURE 

Aloof upon the day's immeasured dome, 

He holds unshared the silence of the sky. 

Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry 
The eagle's empire and the falcon's home — 
Far down, the galleons of sunset roam; 

His hazards on the sea of morning lie; 

Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh 
Where cold Sierras gleam like scattered foam. 

And least of all he holds the human swarm — 
Unwitting now that envious men prepare 
To make their dream and its fulfilment one, 
When, poised above the caldrons of the storm, 
Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall 
dare 
His roads between the thunder and the sun. 

George Sterling. 



Htbtng Uotcesf 




EL DORADO: A SONG 

Largius hie campos aether, et lumine vestit 
Pur pur eo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt. 

Oh, the fields aflame with poppies, 

Buttercups and columbine ! 
Oh, the haze on glade and coppice, 

Haunt of clematis and vine! 
Slopes of green and skies propitious, 
And the air a draft delicious, 

One ethereal anodyne. 

Oh, the sweet acacia flinging 

Golden tassels to the breeze; 
And the wild canaries singing 

In and out the almond trees! 
Spires of apricot and cherry — 
Lanes of lilies — and the merry 

Meadowlark upon the leas ! 

Oh, the purpling hills, the mountains, 
Towns that hallow bight and bay, 

Creeks and canyons, vales and fountains — 
But to tell them is to pray! — 

For their names fulfill the chorus 

61 



62 Golden Songs of 

Of a thousand saints that o'er us 
Swing their censers, night and day. 

Oh, the sun, his chariot turning, 

Hither wheels precipitate, 
Royal bannered, westward — burning, 

Glorifies the Golden Gate ! — 
Sinks behind the Farallones, 
Where his trans-Elysian throne is, 

Where he keeps nocturnal state. 

Lo, the stars — -a purer argent — 
Furrow fields — a deeper blue ! 

And the city from the margent 
Of the ocean leaps in view, 

Climbs the hills of heaven untiring — 

Lilies, poppies, flushing, firing 
All the West with bloom anew. 

Charles Mills Gayley. 



PRESIDIO HILL 

Sabre and cross on this historic crown 

Began the conquest of our Western sward, 

Advancing, while they builded fort and town, 
The Kingdom of the Lord. 



The Golden State 63 

The whale calved, then, in San Diego Bay, 
And in the kelp beds off the Loman shore, 

The otter bred. Tales of that deedful day- 
Leap to men's lips no more; 

But yonder pair, the Parent Palms, oft tell 

Two things, as of them all their dreams were 
made: 

How first rang out the branch-swung Mission bell, 
How Padre Serra prayed. 

The while they speak, the old winds softer blow 
Past palsied Old Town, drowsing in the sun, 

Breathing some pertinent burden, — "Long ago 
The padre's work was done ! " 

Come whence we may, memorial murmurs find 
The heart of us who on these grasses tread; 

'Tis benediction, not the warm sea-wind, 
The breath on the bowed head, 

First felt here when pale Serra bowed, his lip 
Quivering with victory, in the Master's name, 

r As, with the sight of trust, he saw the ship 
Far in the sun's low flame, 

And the Lord's gate was safe. This mother hill, 
Under clear skies, beside the Peaceful Sea, 



64 Golden Songs of 

Her voices all, when winds are loud or still, 
Are sweet with memory. 

At this dark hour — scarce voice enough to tell 
Whether it be of silence or of sound — 

The day is saying once again, "Farewell, 
God's unforgotten ground !" 

The trusting toil, the courage of it all ! 

The votive grasses tremble and grow still : 
The heavens are bending low — 'tis evenfall 

On old Presidio Hill. 

John Vance Cheney. 



COYOTE 



A dim lithe shape moves over the mesa, 
Roves with the night wind up and down ; 

The light- foot ghost, the wild dog of the shadow. 
Howls on the level beyond the town. 
Cry, cry Coyote! 

No fellow has he, with leg or wing, 

No mate has that spectre in fur or feather; 

In the sage brush is whelped a fuzzy thing, 
And mischief itself helps lick him together. 
Up, cub Coyote! 



The Golden State 65 

The winds come blowing over and over, 
The great white moon is looking down; 

In the throat of the dog is devil's laughter. 
Is he baying the moon or baying the town ? 
Howl, howl, Coyote! 

The shadow-dog on the windy mesa, 

He sits, and he laughs in his devil's way, 
Look to the roost and lock up the lambkin ; 
A deal may happen 'twixt now and the day. 
Ha, ha, Coyote ! 

John Vance Cheney. 



WIRELESS 

The high stars glimmer in thine iron net, 

And winds go whimpering along the wires ; 

Vast on the dark thy Titan bulk aspires — 
A watcher on a lonely parapet! 
And far, from hidden isles in ocean set, 

Invisibly, yet thrall to thy desires, 

They come, on wings nor storm nor darkness 
tires — 
Words that the far-off hearts of men beget. 
Gaunt harvester of desperate gulfs of night, 

Strange winnower in wide dim vales of air, 
Wilt thou yet garner by thy mystic might 



66 Golden Songs of 

Some word to still our ancient long despair? 
A whisper from the infinite ? — : a breath 
Caught from the far unfathomed gulf of death? 

Henry Anderson Lafler. 



THE WHITE FEET OF ATTHIS 

Then Atthis to her lover-poet said : 

" Why dost thou never murmur of my feet 

A little song and sweet? 

For surely they are worth a fragile rhyme 

To cast in the teeth of Time." 

From that imperious countenance, behold, 

He looked along the dais stained with gold 

Where bright her silver garments gleamed and, lo ! 

A little drift of snow 

Was newly fallen there, 

Nor fled in the dim air. 

Gazing, a mist about his eyelids fell ; 

As strokes of a loud bell 

His heart beat : loveliness 

Surged in his brain and did his soul possess, 

And earth's white shapes, a cavalcade of dreams, 

Hurried their phantom-streams ; 

[Yet came no vision out of lands or seas 



The Golden State 67 

So per feet- fair as these — 

So white, so slight, so pale, so frail, so sweet 

Were her unsandaled feet. 

Ah, grieved was his heart 

That ever in mead or mart 

Aught carved so fragilely and slender-round 

Should tread the dark, cold ground. 

" Such white hath not the curds 
Drawn of the dreamy herds, 
Nor white breasts of white birds, 
Nor marble women folded in their stone, 
Still, sunless, and unknown. 

" White of a moonlit garden of pale roses, 

And blossomy orchard-closes, 

Or shroud that wreathes a girl's virginity--^ 

Her cold inviolacy — 

Or viewless foam of far, enchanted seas — ■ 

Nay, not any of these 

Is whiter — " 

Suddenly, 
With petulant bright mouth a-question, she 
Shattered to air that weaving reverie 

" Tak'st thou so long to see that they are fair, 
So mute thou standest there ? 



68 Golden Songs of 

A song I'd have to quell the singing birds, 

Of soft and colored words, 

All woven together in a gleaming rhyme — 

Seven silver bells a-chime 

To ring and murmur in all maidens' ears 

Through the unceasing years : 

Her feet were smallest, fairest. They must be 

Forever hating me." 

Then he from all his dreams awakened, 

His grave eyes lifted, said: 

" O Beautiful, mine all-allegiance 

Bowed to the emerald shadows of thy glance, 

And thine unconquered mouth 

(A scarlet poppy out of the warm South), 

And till thou bad'st them see 

Mine eyes knew not so far a falsity 

Unto thy face, O Sweet, 

As one small, fleeting glance unto thy feet ! " 

Thereat she laughed in her high queenly mood, 
And said : " Thy words are of thy poethood, 
And wilt thou bring some slight immortal rhyme 
In morrow's morning-time?" 

He leaned, and Atthis yielded to his lips 
Her cold, sweet finger-tips. 

Henry Anderson Lafler. 



The Golden State 69 



THE TRAIL 

In solemn rank on either hand 

The patient, upright cedars stand. 

The trail, worn smooth by countless feet, 

Is older than an old-world street; 

But no old streets hold such a bower 

Encircled by high fern and flower 

Whose shadows play on mossy ground; 

And no old streets know such a sound 

As rises when the constant stream, 

Chanting its season-varied theme, 

Is colored by the last clear note 

From some brave singer's pulsing throat, 

Who holds the last branch lit by sun 

And dares deny that day is done. 

Yet, different as the old world seems, 

E'en here youth waits and weaves her dreams, 

And lo ! the makers of the trail 

Pass once again before the veil, 

Strange in their garb of ancient days. 

And strange, too, that they go their ways 

Turning their heads no whit to gaze 

Upon the glory of her bower, 

Resplendent at the evening hour 

With beauty and the light of youth — 

They are but phantom folk in truth ! 

Noiseless, a savage hunter, first, 



70 Golden Songs of 

Marks where the antlered deer has burst 
From out his covert fringed with ferns, 
And through the quiet air returns 
The fading turmoil of his flight. 
With laughter low and footsteps light, 
A youth and maid in happy plight 
Walk slowly on, arm linking arm, 
Unconscious of impending harm 
In this last sunset of their sway. 
Close- following the long-trod way, 
A travel-stained priest with pendant cross, 
Comes, the first herald of their loss; 
And in his steps a ruffian band 
Sent out of Spain to burn and brand; 
Then, swiftly, seeking to be first, 
Heedless of hunger, scorning thirst, 
A whole world's venturers, led by dreams 
Of rich and undiscovered streams, 
Whose waters, clear, and swift and cold, 
Sweep over nests of virgin gold; 
Behind these, seeking what they left, 
Close searching every narrow cleft 
And washing over twice-washed sand, 
An alien and more patient band, 
Whose narrow, Orient eyes, and keen, 
Follow their path and leave it clean ; 
Last, walking slowly where these toiled, 
And scanning close the banks despoiled, 



The Golden State 71 

The searchers of the sources pass, 
Marking each loose stone in the grass, 
Noting the contour of the ground, 
The color of the soil, the sound 
Of certain rock that, like a bell, 
Will speak and its long secret tell. 
Before these vanish from her sight 
A clear voice wakes the birds to flight; 
And with his greeting die away- 
All visions of an earlier day. 

In solemn rank on either hand 

The patient, upright cedars stand. 

The trail, worn smooth by countless feet, 

Leads .... home, like any old-world street. 

David Atkins. 



TO VIRGINIA 

Spring and the daffodil again — 

I heard the lark at dawn, 
A liquid cadence through the rain 

Across my lawn. 

The wet red roses all around 

Stir in the breeze, 
The first white trillium breaks the ground 

Under the canyon trees. 



72 Golden Songs of 

I bring the wild white flower of spring, 

Above all others thine, 
As he whom with the gift I bring 

Thy Valentine. 

Henry Atkins. 



OLD GLORY 

Enchanted web ! A picture in the air, 

Drifted to us from out the distance blue 
From shadowy ancestors, through whose brave care 

We live in magic of a dream come true — 
With Covenanters' blue, as if were glassed 
In dewy flower-heart the stars that passed. 
* O blood-veined blossom that can never blight! 

The Declaration, like a sacred rite, 
Is in each star and stripe declamatory, 

The Constitution thou shalt long recite, 
Our hallowed, eloquent, beloved "Old Glory"! 

O symphony in red, white, blue! — fanfare 

Of trumpet, roll of drum, forever new 
Reverberations of the Bell, that bear 

Its tones of liberty the wide world through! 
In battle dreaded like a cyclone blast, 
Symbol of land and people unsurpassed, 

Thy brilliant day shall never have a night. 

On foreign shore no pomp so grand a sight, 



The Golden State 73 

No face so friendly, naught consolatory 

Like glimpse of lofty spar with thee bedight, 
Our hallowed, eloquent, beloved "Old Glory"! 

Thou art the one Flag, an embodied prayer, 
One, highest and most perfect to review; 

Without one, nothing ; it is lineal, square, 
Has properties of all the numbers, too, 

Cube, solid, square root, root of root; best classed 

It for His Essence the Creator cast, 

For purity are thy six stripes of white, 
This number circular and endless quite, 

Six times, well knows the scholar wan and hoary 
His compass spanning circle can alight, 

Our hallowed, eloquent, beloved " Old Glory " ! 

Boldly the seven lines of scarlet flare, 

As when o'er old centurion it blew 
( Red is the trumpet's tone, it means to dare ! ) 

God favored seven when creation grew ; 
The seven planets ; seven hues contrast ; 
The seven metals ; seven days, not last 

The seven tones of marvellous delight 

That lend the listening soul their wings for flight ; 
But why complete the happy category 

That gives the thirteen stripes their charm and 
might ? 
Our hallowed, eloquent, beloved " Old Glory " ! 



74 Golden Songs of 

In thy dear colors, honored everywhere, 

The great and mystic ternion we view ; 
Faith, Hope, and Charity are numbered there 

And the three nails the Crucifixion knew. 
Three are offended when one has trespassed, 
God, and one's neighbor and one's self aghast; 

Christ's deity and soul and manhood's height ; 

Father, and Son and Ghost may here unite, 
iWith texts like these divinely monitory, 

What wonder that thou conquerest in the fight, 
Our hallowed, eloquent, beloved "Old Glory"! 



Envoy 

O blessed Flag! sign of our precious Past, 

^Triumphant Present and our Future vast, 

Beyond starred blue and bars of sunset bright, 
Lead us to higher realm of Equal Right! 

Float on in ever lovely allegory, 

Kin to the eagle, and the wind, and light, 

Our hallowed, eloquent, beloved " Old Glory " ! 

Emma Frances Dawson. 



The Golden State 75 



WHEN ALMONDS BLOOM 

When almond buds unclose, 
Soft white and tender rose, — 
A swarm of white moth things, 
With sunset on their wings, 
That fluttering settle down 
On branches chill and brown; 
When all the sky is blue, 
And up from grasses new 
Blithe springs the meadow lark, — 
Sweet, sweet, from dawn to dark,— a 
When all the young year's way 
Grows sweeter day by day; — 
When almond buds unclose, 
Who doubts of May's red rose ? 

Milicent Washburn Shinn. 



AN ABALONE SHELL 

The sun went down in fog tonight, 
Dropped like a plummet in the bay; 

Only the East was faintly bright, 

While all the West was wide and gray. 

The glories from the sky are stripped, 
The long, smooth breakers meet the land, 



76 Golden Songs of 

Foam-stricken, gray-green, sullen-lipped ; 
I hold the sunset in my hand. 

Grace MacGowan Cooke, 



A WEDDING-DAY GALLOP 

(Early California) 

Gallop with me, love, away and away, 

To the infinite blue at the end of the day. 
Here at the gate 
Crimhild and Brunswicker wistfully wait; 
Up to the saddle, away and away, 
Far away, far, to the end of the day. 

Here by the river and there by the plain, 
Here in the sunlight and there in the rain; 
Off round the mountain's bewildering base, 
Off and away, love. 

There by the sea, along the gray shore, 
Across the dim desert, miles score and score; 
Away and away and always with me. 
Gallop and gallop forever with me. 

Now by the sea ! 
Feet on the sand keeping time with the waves, 

Smile on the lips and flush on the cheek. 
Now a smile, just a glance, all our happiness saves 

Each for the other ; that language we speak 



The Golden State 77 

As we gallop and gallop o'er weed and o'er shell. 
Hark to the waves as they rise and they swell, 

At the swing of the berylline sea. 
Now the waves gallop on like hounds at our feet, 
And ever the wavering moments repeat . 
Crimhild's and Brunswicker's gallopings fleet, 

Along by the sea, 
The chalcedonine, wavering, berylline sea. 

The dun desert now! 
Level sand, ever sand, not a hillock or cleft; 
Lizard here, squirrel there, hurries right, scurries 

left; 
Sagebrush and bitterwood mingle and flow, 
Wavelike and serpentine, on as we go. 
Shadow as scant as the dews and the damp — 

'Ware, there, good Crimhild ! a snake coils 
to spring! 
Ah, her foot cleaves him dead with a metrical stamp, 
With a flash of the eye like the flare of a lamp. 

Now a lift of white mane like the beat of a 

wing, 
Neck to neck she is matching black Bruns- 
wicker's swing. 



A palm-shadowed pool, 
Deeply dark, deeply cool, 



78 Golden Songs of 

Desert-girt, green jeweled, alone in the land, 
Like the emerald engraven I've set on this hand. 
Rest, rest in its shade here, thou heart of my 

heart. 
Here's a cup from my scrip. Here is fruit ripe and 

rare. 
Juice of citron, bread of snow, yellow figs in a rime 
Of sweet dust; jellied cherries, white once on a 

time — 
Dost remember? — in bloom overhead 
iWhen hearkened thy heart to the word that mine 

said. 



Dim lie the blue mountains ; and there waits the dusk 
With a star in her forehead, — a home, O my 
heart, 
To enfold us and hold us; a gardened 
repose 
Of lilies in alleys, and roses, and musk 

Of ripe grapes from the vineyard, all agleam 
and apart, 
In green oaken glades as my heart sees and 
knows. 
As my heart sees and knows, 
There's thy window, netted around with a jasmine 

that gropes, 
Overclimbing the purple of low heliotropes, 



The Golden State 79 

To look with its numberless stars on thy face, 
And sweeten the garden with new-gathered grace. 

There shines the home-candle, through alley and 

vine. 
Home, home, at last, love, — thine, thine ! And mine 
Only so ! Wide the gate, dear and blessed the door. 
Now enter, and dwell, be at rest, heart and thought, 

evermore. 

So endeth our gallop, our days of all days, 
Through the land, by the sea, 

Through the desert wild ways, 

Together, together, and always to be. 

Irene Hardy. 



NEITHER SPIRIT NOR BIRD 

(Shoshone Love Song) 

Neither spirit nor bird — • 
That was my flute you heard 
Last night by the river. 
When you came with your wicker jar 
Where the river drags the willows, 
That was my flute you heard, 
Wacoba, Wacoba, 
Calling, Come to the willows ! 



80 Golden Songs of 

Neither the wind nor a bird 
Rustled the lupine blooms — 
That was my blood you heard 
Answer your garment's hem 
Whispering through the grasses; 
That was my blood you heard 
By the wild rose under the willows. 

That was no beast that stirred — 
That was my blood you heard 
Pacing to and fro 
In the ambush of my desire 
To the flute's four-noted call. 
Wacoba, Wacoba, 
That was my heart you heard 
Leaping under the willows. 

Mary Austin. 



THE BED OF FLEUR-DE-LYS 

High-lying, sea-blown stretches of green turf, 
Wind-bitten close, salt-colored by the sea, 
Low curve on curve spread far to the cool sky, 
And curving over them as long they lie, 
Beds of wild fleur-de-lys. 

Wide-growing, self-sown, stealing near and far, 
Breaking the green like islands in the seas; 



The Golden State 81 

Great stretches at your feet, and spots that bend 
Dwindling over the horizon's end, — 
Wild beds of fleur-de-lys. 

The light keen wind streams on across the lifts, 
Their wind of western springtime by the sea; 
The close turf smiles unmoved, but over her 
Is the far-lying rustle and sweet stir 
In beds of fleur-de-lys. 

And here and there across the smooth, low grass 
Tall maidens wander thinking of the sea; 
And bend, and bend, with light robes blown aside, 
For the blue lily flowers that bloom so wide, — 
The beds of fleur-de-lys. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman. 



TO THE COLORADO DESERT 

Thou brown, bare-breasted, voiceless mystery, 
Hot sphynx of nature, cactus-crowned, what hast 

thou done? 
Unclothed and mute as when the groans of chaos 

turned 
Thy naked burning bosom to the sun. 
The mountain silences have speech, the rivers sing, 
Thou answerest never unto anything. 



82 Golden Songs of 

Pink throated lizards pant in thy slim shade ; 

The horned toad runs rustling in the heat ; 

The shadowy gray coyote, born afraid, 

Steals to some brackish spring, and leaps and prowls 

Away, and howls and howls and howls and howls, 

Until the solitude is shaken with added loneliness. 

The sharp mescal shoots up a giant stalk, 

Its centuries of yearning to the sunburnt skies, 

And drops rare honey from the lips 

Of yellow waxen flowers, and dies. 

Some lengthwise sun-dried shapes with feet and 

hands, 
And thirsty mouths pressed on the sweltering sands, 
Make here and there a gruesome graveless spot 
Where someone drank the scorching hotness and is 

not. 
God must have made thee in His anger and forgot. 

Madge Morris Wagner. 



The Golden State 83 



AT THE STEVENSON FOUNTAIN 

(Portsmouth Square, San Francisco) 

Perhaps from out the thousands passing by — 
The City's hopeless lotos-eaters these, 
Blown by the four winds of the seven seas 

From common want to common company- — ■ 

Perhaps someone may lift a heavy eye 

And see, dream-blown across his memories, 
Those golden pennons bellying in the breeze 

And spread for ports where fair adventures lie. 

And O ! that such a one may stay a space 
And taste of sympathy, till to his ears 

Might come the tale of him who knew the grace 
To suffer sweetly through the bitter years ; 

To catch the smile concealed in Fortune's face 
And draw contentment from a cup of tears ! 

Wallace Irwin. 



84 Golden Songs of 

IN THE MOJAVE 

The starved and passionate desert 

Stares hungry at the sky: 
" O smile not so forever, love, 

With lids forever dry. 

"In tears and not in laughter 

Love oft shall dearest be. 
My heart is thirsty for your tears 

To come and comfort me!" 

I breathe the desert's passion; 

The sun is hot above. 
Oh, rain them down upon my heart,- — 

The soft, cool tears of love! 

Charles F. Lummis. 



JUST CALIFORNIA 

'Twixt the seas and the deserts, 

'Twixt the wastes and the waves, 
Between the sands of buried lands 

And ocean's coral caves, 
It lies nor East nor West, 

But like a scroll unfurled, 
Where the hand of God hath hung it, 

Down the middle of the world. 



The Golden State 85 

It lies where God hath spread it 

In the gladness of His eyes, 
Like a flame of jeweled tapestry 

Beneath His shining skies; 
With the green of woven meadows, 

And the hills in golden chains, 
The light of leaping rivers, 

And the flash of poppied plains. 

Days rise that gleam in glory, 

Days die with sunset's breeze, 
While from Cathay that was of old 

Sail countless argosies; 
Morns break again in splendor 

O'er the giant New-born west, 
But of all the lands God fashioned, 

Tis this land is the best. 

Sun and dews that kiss it, 

Balmy winds that blow, 
The stars in clustered diadems 

Upon its peak of snow ; 
The mighty mountains o'er it, 

Below the white seas swirled — 
Just California stretching down 

The middle of the world. 

John Steven McGroarty. 



86 Golden Songs of 

JANUARY 

When garden plats are pinched and brown, 

Because the sun itself is cold; 
When streams are swollen, freighted down 

With sodden drift and the red mold; 
When plum trees, stripped of leafy gown, 

Toward the salt mist lean branches sere ; 
Then hey, my heart, and ho, my heart, 

The turning of the year. 

When crows fly low and dusks are gray, 

And mists lie fleecy on the hills; 
When walks are bright at break of day, 

And from the hedge a robin trills; 
When leaf buds feel the rising play 

Of spring's intoxicating brew, 
Then hey, my heart, and ho, my heart, 

The year begins anew. 

Warren Cheney. 



WHEN ZEPHYRS BLOW 

When zephyrs blow and softly bring 
A subtle scent of new-born spring; 
O, then, old vagrant dreams arise 
Of other lands and other skies 
Where once I went a-wandering. 



The Golden State 87 

Ay, me ! how recollections cling ! 
The days gone by have left their sting. 
But love detains me with his sighs 
And holds me as his captive prize: 
No more I'll go a-wandering 
When zephyrs blow. 

Samuel Trovers Clover. 



IN CARMEL BAY 

In Carmel Bay the fleeting day, 
Reluctant, casts her robes away 

And steps into the night. 
The fragrant land on either hand 
A crescent forms of glistening sand, 

A bow to speed her flight. 

O'er restless seas she runs at ease, 
k The chariot of the sun to seize, 

Ere he shall drop from sight. 
The pines in banks and solid ranks 
Surrounding, seem pursuing flanks 

Of Beauty's army green. 

To hold her still against her will 
A captive sweet the night to fill 
With visions vaguely seen. 



88 Golden Songs of 

The tides run high against the sky, 
Birds wing in flight and homeward fly, 
To treetops tall and clean. 

The waiting earth has spent her mirth 
And silent, rolls her shadowed girth 

In pale consenting night. 
There is no way for Day to stay, 
Beyond her time or path to stray — 

She steps into the night. 

Madge Clover. 



THE ROSARY 

The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, 

Are as a string of pearls to me ; 
I count them over, every one apart, 
My rosary. 

Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, 
To still a heart in absence wrung ; 
I tell each bead unto the end — and there 
A cross is hung. 

Oh, memories that bless — and burn! 

Oh, barren gain — and bitter loss ! 
I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn 



The Golden State 89 

To kiss the cross, 

Sweetheart, 
To kiss the cross. 

Robert Cameron Rogers. 



EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 

A fire-mist and a planet, 

A crystal and a cell, 
A jellyfish and a saurian, 

And caves where the cavemen dwell; 
Then a sense of law and beauty, 

And a face turned from the clod — 
Some call it Evolution, 

And others call it God. 

A haze on the far horizon, 

The infinite, tender sky, 
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields, 

And the wild geese sailing high; 
And all over upland and lowland, 

The charm of the goldenrod — 
Some of us call it Autumn, 

And others call it God. 

Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, 
When the moon is new and thin, 



90 Golden Songs of 

Into our hearts high yearnings 
Come welling and surging in : 

Come from the mystic ocean 
Whose rim no foot has trod — 

Some of us call it Longing, 
And others call it God. 

A picket frozen on duty, 

A mother starved for her brood, 
Socrates drinking the hemlock, 

And Jesus on the rood; 
And millions, who, humble and nameless, 

The straight, hard pathway plod — 
Some call it Consecration, 

And others call it God. 

William Herbert Carruth. 



GOLD-OF-OPHIR ROSES 
I 

O flower of passion, rocked by balmy gales, 

Flushed with life's ecstasy, 
Before whose golden glow the poppy pales 

And yields her sovereignty! 

Child of the ardent south, thy burning heart 
Has felt the sun's hot kiss ; 



The Golden State 91 

Thy creamy petals falling half apart 
Quiver with recent bliss. 

For joy at thy unequalled loveliness, 

He woos with fierce delight; 
And thy glad soul, half faint with his caress, 

L Yet glories in his might. 

Thy sighs go out in perfume on the air, 

Rich incense of thy love, 
And mystic lights, an opalescence rare, 

Play round thee from above. 

II 

So thou dost riot through the glad spring days, 
Sun-wooed and reveling in eager life, 

Till all the shadowed fragrance of the ways 
With thy rich bloom and glowing tints is rife. 

A joyous smile that hides a secret tear, 
A note of music with a minor strain, 

A heart of gold where crimson wounds appear, 
Thou breathest all love's sweetness and its pain. 

Yet suddenly, even at thy loveliest, 
Thou palest with thine own intensity. 

Ah, Passion's child, thou art most truly blest, 
To bloom one perfect day, and then to die. 

Grace Atherton Dennen. 



I 



92 Golden Songs of 



EBB TIDE AT NOON 

The breezes sleep; their morning journey done. 

The seaweeds mat the sluggish channel's edges. 
The sand-flat twinkles in the summer sun, 

And fishes flap and spatter in the sedges. 

Far off across the dunes there comes the sound 
Of lazy surges droning on the shingle. 

My boat drifts idly, swinging half -aground; — 
Then bickering gulls their raucous voices mingle. 

For all has changed ; and to the harbor bar 
Has come a secret message from the ocean, 

A thousand hurrying ripples speed from far, 
And all the waters waken into motion. 

Gelett Burgess, 



A SONG FOR THE NEW YEAR 

Here's to the Cause, and the blood that feeds it ! 

Here's to the Cause, and the soul that speeds it ! 
Coward or Hero, or Bigot or Sage, 
All shall take part in the war that we wage ; 

And though 'neath our banners range contrary man- 



The Golden State 93 

ners, shall we pick, shall we choose 'twixt 
the false and the true? 
Not for us to deny them, let the Cause take and try 
them — the one man for us is the man who 
can do! 

Here's to the Cause, let who will get the Glory ! 
Here's to the Cause, and a fig for the story ! 

The braggarts may tell it who serve but for 

fame; 
There'll be more than enough that will die for 

the Name! 
And though in some eddy our vessels unsteady be 

stranded and wrecked ere the victory's 

won, 
Let the current sweep by us. O Death, come and 

try us! What if laggards win praise, if 

the Cause shall go on ? 

Here's to the Cause, and the years that have passed ! 
Here's to the Cause — it will triumph at last! 
The end shall illumine the hearts that have 

braved 
All the years and the fears that the Cause might 
be saved. 
And though what we hoped for, and darkly have 
groped for, come not in the manner we 
prayed that it should, 



94 Golden Songs of 

We shall gladly confess it, and the Cause, may God 
bless it! shall find us all worthy who did 
what we could! 

Gelett Burgess. 



IN AN ALAMEDA FIELD 

Lost Sappho's voice passed on the wind today 

In the perishing soprano of a lark, 
That called down April's rose-apparelled way; 

And far quick thrills of color frayed the dark 
As though God's garment trailed along the east; 

Keen tender odors drifted from the sea, 
And splendid gold through all the sky increased, 

As her wild lyric cry rang out to me. 

Her strain fell quivering sweet, " Forbear to love ; " 

Fell with the old heart-rifting of despair; 
Fell in a break of grief past telling of — 
"Forbear to love, to love forbear, forbear." 
To only my grief -sharpened ear she cried, 
How could she know my heart last night had died ? 

Anna Catherine Markham. 



The Golden State 95 



SONG OF CRADLE-MAKING 

Thou hast stirred! 
When I lifted thy little cradle, 
The little cradle I am making for thee, 
I felt thee ! 

The face of the beach smiled, 
I heard the pine-trees singing : 

In the White Sea the Dawn-Eagle dipped his wing. 
O, never have I seen so much light through thy 
father's doorway! 

(Wast thou pleased with thy little cradle?) 

Last night I said : " When the child comes — 

If it is a Son — 

I will trim his cradle with shells : 

And proudly I will bear him in his rich cradle 

Past the doors of barren women; 

And all shall see my Little Chief in his rich cradle! " 

That was last night ; 

Last night thou hadst not stirred ! 

O I know not if thou be a son — 

Strong Chief, Great Fisher, Law-of Woman, 

As thy father is ; 



96 Golden Songs of 

Or only Sorrow-Woman, Patient Serving Hands, 

Like thy mother. 

I only know I love thee, 

Thou Little One under my heart ! 

For thou didst move ; and every part of me trembled. 

I will trim thy cradle with many shells, and with 

cedar- fringes; 
Thou shalt have goose-feathers on thy blanket! 
I will bear thee in my hands along the beach, 
Singing as the sea sings, 
Because the little mouths of sand are ever at her 

breast. 

Mother- face of the Sea, how thou dost smile — 
And I have wondered at thy smiling ! 

Aiihi! Thy Little feet — 

1 felt them press me ! 

Lightly, so lightly I hear them coming: 

Like little brown leaves running over the earth — 

Little leaves, wind-hastened on the sudden autumn 

trails ! 
Earth loves the little running feet of leaves. 
— (Thy little brown feet!) 

O K'antsamiq'ala Soe, Our Praised One, 
Let there be no more barren women! 
May thou bring no tears, my child 



The Golden State 97 

When I bear thee, in thy rich cradle, 

By the chanting sea-paths where the women labor. 

Thou hast stirred ! 
Oh ! haste, haste, little feet — 
Little brown feet lightly running 
Down the trail of the hundred days ! 

• • • • • 

The wind is white with rocking bird-cradles; 
Day is in the eyes of the Sea. 
Ah ! never have I seen so much light 
Through thy father's doorway! 

Constance Lindsay Skinner, 



IPHIGENIA IN AULIS 
(Greek Theater, August 14, 1915) 

O godlike gestures, whose compelling sweep 
Bids buried glories and the golden lore 
Of days long lost live all their beauty o'er ! 

How like a sickle doth thy white arm reap 

Thy sheaf of sorrow ! Ah, thou dost not weep 
Alone, sweet Iphigenia! nor implore 
The sterile heavens to blow from Aulis' shore 

A breath of saving o'er the blighted deep ! 



98 Golden Songs of 

Daughter of sacrifice! thy tender grace, 
Thy tragic story tremulous with tears, 

Is more than legend now ! Thy lovely face 

Shines like a star through all the shadowed night; 

Thy voice hath touched anew the vanished years, 
Kindling Time's ancient silences with light! 

Charles Phillips. 



TO PALEOLITHIC MAN 
(Restored in a Museum) 

My Father! Lo, thy hundred thousand years 
Are but as yesterday when it is past. 
Today thy very voice is in mine ears ; 
On mine own mirror is thy likeness cast. 

Thy sap it is in these my veins runs green ; 
Thine are these knitted thews of bone and skin; 
This cushioned width lay once thy ribs between, 
As my heart did with thine its work begin. 

Be it however contoured, this frail cup 
That holds the stuff and substance of my brain, 
From thy prognathic skull was moulded up; 
Do I not share with thee the mark of Cain? 

Not I should shudder at the thickened neck, 
Full from thy shoulders to thy sloping head; 



The Golden State 99 

It bore the brunt of many a rout and wreck 
That spared the slender loins whence I was bred. 

Nor should I blush, my Father, seeing how 

Thy furry jowl is kindred to my cheek; 

It shuts upon a tongue, I mind me now, 

Which stuttering spent itself that I might speak. 

I and my brothers roam this rich Today 
Unhindered, unafraid, because thy feet, 
Stone-bruised and heavy with primordial clay, 
God's winepress trod to make our vintage sweet. 

What then, Progenitor ? Shall we repay 
Such debt in any coin but filial love ? 
Leave thy defenseless carcass on display 
With fossil horse and pterodactyl dove? 

For thee no epic and no monument ! 
For lesser hero, meaner pioneer, 
Our bays and honors; shall thy sons consent 
To leave thee standing naked, nameless, here? 

Fanny Hodges Newman. 



100 Golden Song 

"THE CAULDRON" 
(At La Jolla) 

Here on the swart and deeply-angled shore 
The great waves gather up their final breath 
And fling themselves to swift and stony death; 
The creamed streams that billows were before, 
Ooze o'er the purple rocks, and foaming, pour 
In hurried cascades down, far down beneath, 
To seek in placid deeps their burial sheath. 
So fierce desires would wreck my life; for more, 
More madly in the cauldron of my soul 
Come they to threaten all the imposed bounds. 
To death, O Lord of Lords, let them be tossed! 
Let not the tragic stars see them their goal 
Reach and destroy my peace. Where no storm 

sounds, 
Beneath life's plangent sea, let them be lost. 

Francis Walker. 



TO MY MOUTAIN 

O my Mountain, my Mountain, 
Enveloped in your cloak of snow, 
Can you hear? 



The Golden State 101 

Temple of my night, 
Cradle of my day, 
Can you hear ? 

I warn you of the braggart of the sky, 

The Sun! The Sun! 

He outruns my warning words 

To steal your snows, 

O my Mountain, my Mountain. 

Great body-guard of God — 
Can you hear ? 

Mahdah Payson. 



WIND OF THE SOUTH 

Tender you were and shy, wind of the South. 

You blew me kisses from my lover's mouth ; 
With your caressing touch upon my cheek 
I closed my eyes, and thought I heard him speak. 

Wind of the South, cruel you are and bold, 
In your wild cries my wretchedness is told; 
Beyond the frozen sails and icy spars 
My love is dead, beneath the Southern stars. 

Jennie McBride Butler. 



102 Golden Songs of 



CALIFORNIA OF THE SOUTH 

The land is a garden of glamour, where passes 
Each breeze on its wandering way to the sea ; 

And prodigal, scatters the sweets it amasses 

From orange groves yielding their stores tenderly, 

To be breathed back again to the tremulous grasses 
Through which Zephyr ranges; — a light lover, 
. he! 

'Tis the garden of Eden; high hedges enclose it 

Of lime and of cypress; a still spirit rests 
'Neath the veil of the mountains (the hushed silence 
shows it), 
And he broods the sweet valley to sleep on his 
breast. 
This is a sanctuary; — every bird knows it, 

And knows the broad landscape was made for his 
nest. 

For hark how the hedges and bushes are ringing 
With madrigals! Mark how the jubilant trees 

Are budding with birds and a-blossom with singing; 
And look! from each spray a small singer of 
glees 

Is trilling and trilling his skyward song flinging ; — 
Sure Italy's skies are not bluer than these ! 



The Golden State 103 

Here rain in swift showers soft tropical flowers 

Sweet somnolent scents on the tropical air; 
Lavish roses have reared them a riotous bower, 
Flaunting crimson and gold their gray gonfalons 
flare, 
And the heart of each rose and the heart of each 
hour 
Shows the last-bloomed the rarest, where each still 
was rare. 

This is the land of the poet's desire; 

This is the Beautiful's indwelling place; 
Land of the new dawn and late sunset's fire, 

Lo, she laughs like a child in the grim East's 
face! 
And a thousand years shall be born and expire 

Ere her youth shall have dimmed its immortal 

° ' Grace Ellery Channing. 



THE CAMPFIRE 

Until that eve I never knew you; 

It had been weariest of days, 
Some homely trivial errand drew you 

Into my campfire's blaze. 
You, who like me had paused to rest 

Upon the trail of your far quest. 



104 Golden Songs of 

You knelt to stir the sullen embers ; 

The light caught cheek and chin and brow — 
How dear the soul of love remembers! 

Why I can see you even now — 
The wearied mystery of your eyes, 
Deep shadowed as the circling skies; 

Can see the desert, silent, lonely, 
The camp beside its brackish well, 

All dream-like, dim, in which two only 
Seemed set apart by some strange spell. 

Within a magic ring of light 

Just you and I : outside the night ! 

Margaret Adelaide Wilson. 



AS I CAME DOWN MOUNT TAMALPAIS 

As I came down Mount Tamalpais, 

To North the fair Sonoma hills 
Lay like a trembling thread of blue 

Beneath a sky of daffodils; 
Through tules green a silver stream 

Ran South to meet the tranquil bay, 
Whispering a dreamy, tender tale 

Of vales and valleys far away. 



The Golden State 105 

As I came down Mount Tamalpais, 

To South the city brightly shone, 
Touched by the sunset's good-night kiss 

Across the golden ocean blown ; 
I saw its hills, its tapering masts, 

I almost heard its tramp and tread, 
And saw against the sky the cross 

Which marks the City of the Dead. 

As I came down Mount Tamalpais, 

To East San Pablo's water lay, 
Touched with a holy purple light, 

The benediction of the day; 
No ripple on its twilight tide, 

No parting of its evening veil, 
Save dimly in the far-off haze 

One dreamy, yellow sunset sail. 

As I came down Mount Tamalpais, 

To West Heaven's gateway opened wide, 
And through it, freighted with day-cares, 

The cloud-ships floated with the tide; 
Then silently through stilly air, 

Starlight flew down from Paradise, 
Folded her silver wings and slept 

Upon the slopes of Tamalpais. 

Clarence Urmy. 



106 Golden Songs of 



A CALIFORNIA SONG 

I come to you with a gift in my hand, 

A flower that grew in a golden land, 

A land on whose head is a poppy crown 

And the scent of the blossoms is wafted down 

To the amber bay and the topaz sea 

And the sun-god's grave by the cocoa tree. 

I come to you with a flower whose face 
Is the zenith of beauty, the acme of grace; 
There are dreams in its eyes and the song on its lips 
Is the lullaby song of the shadow that slips 
O'er the tall purple mountain that watches like Fate 
The silver sails threading the fair Golden Gate. 

I come to you with a flower whose breath 
Brings freedom from fear of disaster and death, 
For though El Dorado be blackened, and rock 
Through the demon of fire and the earthquake 

shock, 
[There is peace in the hearts of her children who 

know 
The scent of the fields where the poppies grow. 

Clarence Urmy. 



The Golden State 107 



FOREST COUPLETS 

Beneath a redwood let me lie 
And all its harmonies untie : 

Melodic sequences of spray 

And bough and trunk in rich array ; 

Chromatic hue and tint and shade. 
Of beryl, emerald and jade; 

Cadenzas, day-dreams that enfold 
The padres, argonauts and gold ; 

Soft passing notes, the tones that tell 
Of poppy-field and mission bell; 

With sea-wind cadences that blow 
In dominant arpeggio, 

Resolving into chords full blent 
Of solace, peace, and calm content. 

Clarence Urmy. 



108 Golden Songs of 



NIGHT IN CAMP 

Fierce burns our fire of driftwood; overhead 
Gaunt maples lift long arms against the night; 
The stars are sobbing, — sorrow-shaken, white, 
And high they hang, or show sad eyes grown red 
With weeping for their queen — the moon just dead. 
Weird shadows backward reel when tall and 

bright 
The broad flames stand and fling a golden light 
On mats of soft, green moss around us spread. 
A sudden breeze comes in from off the sea, 
The vast old forest draws a troubled breath, 
A leaf awakens; up the shores of sand 
The black tide, silver-lipped, creeps noiselessly; 
The camp fire dies, then silence deep as death, 
The darkness pushing down upon the land. 

Herbert Bash ford. 



MORNING IN CAMP 

A bed of ashes and a half -burned brand 

Now mark the spot where last night's campfire 

sprung 
And licked the dark with slender scarlet tongue; 

The sea draws back from shores of yellow sand 



The Golden State 109 

Nor speaks lest he awake the sleeping land ; 
Tall trees grow out of shadows; high among 
Their somber boughs one clear, sweet song is 
sung; 
In deep ravine by drooping cedars spanned 
All drowned in glory, a flying pheasant's whirr 
Rends morning's solemn hush; gray rabbits run 
Across the covered glade; then far away 
Upon a hill, each huge, expectant fir 

Holds open arms in welcome to the sun, — 
Great pulsing heart of bold advancing day. 

Herbert Bashford. 



IN THE VALLEY 

The Sierra-rock, a tavern for the clouds, refuses 
to let Fame and Gold sojourn. — 

Down the Heaven by the river-road, an Angel's 
ethereal shadow strays. — 

The Genii in the valley-cavern consult in silence the 
message of the Heavens. 

O Lord, show unto mortals thy journal — the bal- 
ance of Glory and Decay ! 

Yone Noguchi. 



110 Golden Songs of 



TO WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

Dead ! and we gaze, unseeing, on your bier, 

Where westward thunders roll; 
But though you die, your living song is clear 

(Prometheus lights your goal) ; 
5And till we too are taken, we can hear 

That music from your soul ! 

Herbert Heron. 



SANTA BARBARA BEACH 

Now while the sunset offers, 
Shall we not take our own : 

The gems, the blazing coffers, 
The seas, the shores, the throne? 

The sky-ships, radiant-masted, 
Move out, bear low our way. 

Oh, Life was dark while it lasted, 
Now for enduring day. 

Now with the world far under, 
To draw up drowning men 

And show them lands of wonder 
Where they may build again. 



The Golden State 111 

- 

There earthly sorrow falters, 

There longing has its wage ; 
There gleam the ivory altars 

Of our lost pilgrimage. 

— Swift flame- — then shipwrecks only 

Beach in the ruined light; 
Above them reach up lonely 

The headlands of the night. 

A hurt bird cries and flutters 

Her dabbled breast of brown; 
The Western wall unshutters 

To fling one last rose down. 

A rose, a wild light after — 

And life calls through the years, 
"Who dreams my fountain's laughter 

Shall feed my wells with tears.' ' 

Ridgely Torrence. 



THE CREED OF DESIRE 

Still to be sure of the Dawn — 
Still to be glad for the Sea — 
Still to know fire of the blood: 
God keep these gifts in me! 



112 Golden Songs of 

Then — I shall cleave the dark! 
Then I shall breast the redoubt! 
Then I shall Glory the Lord — 
And go down to the Grave 
With a shout! 

Bruce Porter. 



A CALIFORNIA EASTER MASS 

Now burn the poppy-lamps of Spring 
Along the lifting aisles of grain; 

Before the mystic offering, 

The earth-warm breathing censers swing 

And choirs innumerable sing 
The gloria of the Born-again. 

Charles K. Field. 



THE YEARS 

Each life is like a changing flower; 

Like petals, pale or colored free, 
The years drop softly, hour by hour, 

And leave rich seeds of memory! 

Charles K. Field. 



The Golden State 113 



WESTERN BLOOD 

My tower faces south and north, 
And east it opens wide, 
But not a window pane looks forth 
Upon the western side. 

I gaze out north on city roofs, 
And south on city smoke, 
And to the east are throbbing hoofs, 
The rush of city folk ; 

But not a ray of western light 
May fall across my work, 
No crevice opens to the night 
Where western eyes may lurk; 

My crowded days are spent in quest 
Of eager city things, 
And when the little birds fly west, 
I would not hear their wings. 

But they who once have climbed the Town, 
When daylight lingered late, 
And watched the western sun go down 
Athwart the burnished Gate, 



114 Golden Songs of 

And felt the rolling fogs descend, 

And seen the lupine blown, 

And known what things a western friend 

May offer to his own, 

Ah, they can never hush for long — 
He knew what would be best 
Who built my tower high and strong, 
And closed it to the west. 

Juliet Wilbur Tompkins. 



LET US GO HOME TO PARADISE 

Let us go home to Paradise, 

O my adored! 
There are neither flaming sword 
Prohibitive, nor angel's eyes 
Jealous of our happiness. 
O from this valley of distress 
Look up, look back to Paradise ! 

There gentle mists are drawn along 

The margins of the deep, 
And up the quiet valleys creep, 
There the pines with low sweet song 
Murmur at morning half asleep, 



The Golden State 115 

Trailing through each fingered bow 
The gray fog on the hill's brow. 

Our beautiful peninsula 

Cannot rejoice 
For all its forest, and the voice 
Of breaking waves in Carmel Bay, 
Until we come; the cypresses 
Grieve above the dove-gray seas 
For us their lovers far away. 

Robinson Jeffers. 



WINDY MORNING 

(Catalina Island, 1913) 

Dawn with a jubilant shout 

Leaps on the shivering sea 
And puffs the last pale planet out 
And scatters the flame-bright clouds about 

Like the leaves of a frost-bitten tree. 

Does a gold seed split the rosy husk ? 

Nay, a sword ... a shield ... a spear ! 
The kindler of all fires that burn 
Deep in the day's cerulean urn 
Rides up across the clear 
And tramples down the cowering dusk 
Like a strong-browed charioteer. 



116 Golden Songs of 



Blow out and far away 

The dim, the dull, the dun ; 
Prosper the crimson, blight the gray, 
And blow us clean of yesterday, 
Stern morning fair begun, 

Till the earth is an opal bathed in dew, 
Flashing with emerald, gold, and blue, 
Held where the skies wash through and 
through 
High up against the sun. 

Odell Shepard. 



NERO 



This Rome, that was the toil of many men, 
The consummation of laborious years — 
Fulfillment's crown to visions of the dead, 
And image of the wide desire of kings — 
Is made by darkling dream's effulgency, 
Fuel of vision, brief embodiment 
Of wanton will and wastage of the strong, 
Fierce ecstasy of one tremendous hour, 
When ages piled on ages were aflame 
To all the years behind and years to be. 

Yet any sunset were as much as this 

Save for the music forged by hands of fire 

From out the hard, straight silences which bind 



The Golden State 117 

Dull Matter's tongueless mouth — a music pierced 
With the tense voice of life, more quick to cry- 
Its agony — and save that I believed 
The radiance redder for the blood of men. 
Destruction hastens and intensifies 
The process that is beauty, manifests 
Ranges of form unknown before, and gives 
Motion and voice and hue, where otherwise 
Bleak inexpressiveness has leveled all. 

If one create, there is the lengthy toil, 
The labored days and years toward an end 
Less than the measure of desire, mayhap, 
After the sure consuming of all strength, 
And strain of faculties that otherwhere 
Were loosed upon enjoyment; and at last 
Remains to one, capacity nor power 
For pleasure in the thing that he hath made. 
But on destruction hangs but little use 
Of time nor faculty, but all is turned 
To the one purpose, unobstructed, pure, 
Of sensuous rapture and observant joy; 
And from the intensities of death and ruin 
One draws a heightened and completer life, 
And both extends and vindicates himself. 

I would I were a god, with all the scope 
Of attributes that are the essential core 



118 Golden Songs of 

Of godhead, and its visibility. 

I am but Emperor, and hold awhile 

The power to hasten death upon its way, 

And cry a halt to worn and lagging life 

For others, but for mine own self may not 

Delay the one, nor bid the other speed. 

There have been many kings, and they are dead, 

And have no power in death save what the wind 

Confers upon their blown and brainless dust 

To vex the eyeballs of posterity. 

But were I God, I would be overlord 
Of many kings, and were as breath to guide 
Their dust of destiny. And were I God, 
Exempt from this mortality which clogs 
Perception and clear exercise of will, 
What rapture it would be, if but to watch 
Destruction crouching at the back of Time, 
The tongueless dooms which dog the traveling suns, 
The vampire Silence at the breast of worlds, 
Fire without light that gnaws the base of things, 
And Lethe's mounting tide that rots the stone 
Of fundamental spheres. This were enough 
Till such time as the dazzled wings of will 
Came up with power's accession, scarcely felt 
For very suddenness. Then would I urge 
The strong contention and conflicting might 
Of chaos and creation, matching them, 



The Golden State 119 

These immemorial powers inimical, 

And all their stars and gulfs subservient — 

Dynasts of Time, and anarchs of the dark — 

In closer war reverseless ; and would set 

New discord at the universal core, 

A Samson-principle to bring it down 

In one magnificence of ruin. Yea, 

The monster Chaos were mine unleashed hound, 

And all my power Destruction's own right arm. 

I would exult to mark the smouldering stars 

Renew beneath my breath their elder fire, 

And feed upon themselves to nothingness. 

The might of suns, slow-paced with swinging weight 

Of myriad worlds, were made at my desire 

One long rapidity of roaring light, 

Through which the voice of Life were audible, 

And singing of the immemorial dead 

Whose dust is loosened into vaporous wings 

With soaring wrack of systems ruinous. 

And were I weary of the glare of these, 

I would tear out the eyes of light, and stand 

Above a chaos of extinguished suns, 

That crowd and grind and shiver thunderously, 

Lending vast voice and motion, but no ray 

To the stretched silentness of blinded gulfs. 

Thus would I give my godhead space and speech 

For its assertion, and thus pleasure it, 



120 Golden Songs of 

Hastening the feet of Time with cast of worlds 
Like careless pebbles, or with shattered suns 
Brightening the aspect of Eternity. 

Clark Ashton Smith. 



IN A GARDEN 

Impressions 

Along my fence 

The roses 

Are a Ballet Russe — 

A mad whirl of snow flakes, 

Dancing, swirling, glancing, twirling, 

Under the spot light 

Of the sun. 

The premiere danseuse, 

A golden-eyed Cherokee, 

In blazing white, 

Pirouettes and poses among the roses, 

Gloriously full 

Of the passion 

Of Spring. 

A White Iris 

Tall and clothed in samite, 
Chaste and pure, 



The Golden State 121 

In smooth armor — 

Your head held high 

In its helmet 

Of silver: 

Jean D'Arc riding 

Among the sword blades! 

Has Spring for you 
Wrought visions, 
As it did for her 
In a garden ? 

Stocks 

Fluffy, beribboned ladies 

In a row, 

You have pinned rosettes, 

Rosettes of chiffon, 

Pink and mauve, 

Purple and white, 

White and deeper red, 

Pinned them here and there 

About your hats 

And your ruffled green petticoats. 

The jonquils 

Across the path, 

Adore your flutterings but 

Shy, young things, 

They can only bow stiffly. 



122 Golden Songs of 

Marigolds 

When Spring passed 

This evening 

Her head was so turned 

By the young moon, 

She left her purse strings untied 

And a lot of gold guineas 

Fell in my garden. 

Pauline B. Barrington. 



YOUTH'S SONGS 

They lift upon the first rush of bright wings 
Into the heaven of singing; and they dare 
To glimpse unseen and utter tacit things, 
And with unstained hands from the temple tear 
The inmost veil to find if truth be there. 
They chant in darkness with unbated breath 
The age-old exorcisms of despair — 
How may we sing who once have walked with 

death? 
O Poet, Poet, lingering, lingering late 
To dream fulfilment of star-high desire, 
A little longer and in vain you wait 
[The flush of mystery, the cloak of fire; 



The Golden State 123 

Youth's songs have wings, but after-words shall be 
As gray leaves fallen to the wild white sea. 

Maxwell Anderson. 



AMATEURS 

Aloft among the gallery gods, 

Whose peering faces crowd the night 

With muttered breath and mocking nods, 
There waits the Keeper of the Light. 

From out the pit the roll and crash 

Of music comes, and through the dark 

The spot pours down a blinding flash 
Upon its momentary mark. 

It is Pierrette that flutters there 

Alone, until there comes Pierrot ; — 

Comes hissing, laughter and despair, 
And darkness blots them as they go. 

They tried, O God, how hard they tried ; 

Though loveliness was theirs, and grace, 
The Keeper of the Light denied 

A moment more to their embrace. 

Geroid Robinson. 



124 Golden Songs of 



THE SONG OF THOMAS THE RHYMER 

You have taken the sun and the stars from Heaven 
With your dusky eyes that glow like wine, 
You have taken the sweetness from the rose 
With the touch of your warm red lips on mine. 
You have stilled the song in the meadowlark's throat 
With your voice that holds all melody, 
And the fear is heavy upon my heart 
That you have taken my God from me ! 

Marjorie Charles Driscoll. 



LUCK 



Let there live aye a lad's laugh in the throat of 

you — 
Let you aye have a gay swing to the coat of you — 
Let there aye be one poorer to borrow a groat of 



you! 



Let you find hands of dear women to mother you — 
Let you find shoulders of comrades that brother 

you — 
Let you find arms of the small ones to smother you ! 



The Golden State 125 

Let folk be the happier just for the nod of you — 
Let you be in love with the road that is trod of 

you — 
Let Death be a step betwix you and the God of 

you! 

Dare Stark. 



MATER DOLOROSA 

Last night I heard the keenin' at Patrick Connell's 
wake, 
" O poor lad, O good lad — that you should have 
to go; 
But then the Lord has given, an' sure the Lord may 
take — 
Let Mary help his mother to bear the bitter woe ! " 

At dawn I heard the fishermen a-talkin' on the quay, 

"A fine lad, a clean lad — that God may rest 

his soul; 

"'Twas well he knew the fishin' banks, 'twas well 

he loved the sea — 

Let Mary help his mother to bear the bitter dole ! 

At noon I saw him buried upon the windy hill ; 

I saw the black earth cover the coffin from her 
sight — 



126 Golden Songs of 

O Mary, in your mercy, be kindly to her still 

And pray to God her heart will break, that she 
may die tonight ! " 

James Leo Duff. 



THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO 

First Bell 

Ave Maria Purissima ! Hear ! 
Seventeen ninety and six was the year 
When I was hung in the tower of stone, 
Singing aloft in a solemn tone 
Sending my summons for miles around 
That all might list to the solemn sound — • 
Kling, klang, clatter and ring, 
Thus the bells of the mission sing. 

Second Bell 

Diva Jesus clanged my cry 

When Padre Fuster hung me high, 

And my metal tongue in its brazen throat 

Sounded its first triumphant note, 

Chimed with my mate in a mighty din 

When the vespers were solemnly chanted within, 

Kling, klang, clatter and ring, 

Thus the bells in the mission sing. 



The Golden State 127 



Third Bell 

Hail, O holy San Rafael, 

I proudly pealed in a silver knell 

When high in the belfry aloft I hung 

And a note was struck with my eager tongue, 

Heard by the Indian mother and child, 

By soldier stern and by padre mild — 

Kling, klang, clatter and ring, 

Thus the bells of the mission sing. 

All the Bells 

Hail, O Holy Mother — hear! 
Thus we all pealed for many a year, 
Called the vaquero away from his stock, 
Summoned the herder to leave his flock, 
Indian mother and Mexican maid 
Fondly the summons to prayer obeyed; 

Till, ah, we called on an evil hour, 

For the temblor came and it rent our tower, 

And down we fell with a crash and a clang, 

With the cries of the stricken the sad church rang. 

Then they lifted us up to toll for the dead, 

And solemn and slow were the notes we said; 

Toll, toll, stifled and slow — 

Thus the bells voiced a people's woe. 



128 Golden Songs of 

Such were the songs of our ancient prime, 

But O the havoc and waste of time — 

For the years, the years with their pitiless train 

Have heard our pleadings and prayers in vain ; 

They have levelled the graves in the church yard 

lone, 
They have broken the arches and scattered the 

stone — 
Clatter and ring, clatter and ring! 
Our throats are cracked and they seldom sing. 

Charles Keeler. 



PESCADERO PEBBLES 

Crash of the crystal surf all night on the wind-wild 
beaches, 

Boom of the billows that break day-long on the peb- 
bled reaches, 

Roar of the riotous waves on rock ridges shattered 
and sundered, 

Moaning and sobbing and shouting the turbulent 
elements thundered. 

Idly I lay on the sea-rim, the pebbles I dropped 

through my fingers, 
Jewels of jade and of beryl, with opaline sea-tint 

that lingers 



The Golden State 129 

Long as the wild waves wet them where mermaidens 

tossed them away, 
Sparkling in beauty neglected to glow in the salt 

sea spray. 

Out of the ocean of longing, whose shore is the 
heart-rim dreary, 

Peereth a wild mermaiden through turbulent sea- 
mist eerie, 

RVine-red carnelians and crystals translucent at my 
feet flinging, 

And salt tears wet them and leave them aglow by 
the mad waves singing. 

Charles Keeler. 



THE CHILD HEART 

The shy flowers smile in the face of their father 

the bountiful Bright One, 
The wild birds chant his praise when he smiles with 

the blessing of day; 
The child- folk follow the wood-things into the wild 

with laughter, 
And you and I, beloved, shall follow them all away 
Into the fields of faery, unto the haunted wood, 
And serve them ever with gladness, and learn to be 

pure and good. 

Charles Keeler. 



130 Golden Songs of 



MIDSUMMER EAST AND WEST 



The meadows are green and sweet with clover, 
The sun shines hot and the clouds drift over 

The deep skies' measureless blue. 
A cooling breath and the rain drops patter 
On the dusty road, and the light winds scatter 

The hurrying leaves, and strew 
The glistening grass with dead rose petals; 
A gurgle and rush and the water settles 

In many a sunbright pool. 
Anon is a flash and a note of thunder, 
And the forest king lies rent asunder, 

And the woods are dim and cool. 



ii 

The hills are brown and the fields are yellow; 
The barley blowing, the ripe fruit mellow ; 

The sun beats warm on the road. 
Now days grow long and the skies are cloudless, 
And nights are bright with the fair moon shroudless ; 

Dry rocks where the river flowed, 
The throstle hides and sings in the hedges, 
The round-eyed toad peeps up from the sedges 

That droop by the shallow streams. 



The Golden State 131 

The leaves are stirred by the Southwind's sallies, 
The mountains sleep and the misty valleys, 
And the world is wrapped in dream. 

Virna Woods. 



YOSEMITE STROPHES 
The Valley 

Gray and bleakly majestic, the bastioned walls of the 

valley, 
Springing sheer to the sky, dwarf the great pine trees 

beneath. 

Bridal Veil Falls 

White from a notch of the cliffs you slide, oh sylph 
of the mountains, 

Easily, lissomly down, floating on delicate feet. 

Bright from your shoulders trail the folds of a robe 
of jewels, 

Softening to film as they fall, looped with a rain- 
bow loop. 

Other Waterfalls 

Hung on the eaves of the world, the thin ribbon 
dangles and flutters; 



132 Golden Songs of 

Broadly the Vernal spreads its mantel of feathery- 
spray ; 

Headlong Yosemite leaps, and pauses, and leaps 
again forward; 

Cliff-overshadowed Nevada gleams from the dark 
like a wraith. 

The Big Trees of Mariposa 

Cinnamon-silver they rise, — the trunks of the titan 

sequoias ; 
Centuries blossom and fall, fadeless their branches 

endure. 

Conclusion: Yosemite Remembered 

Grave and remote and austere, you haunt me with 

beauty, oh valley, — 
Beauty undreamed of before, now all a dream or a 

star. 

Charles Wharton Stork. 



THE MOUNTAIN 

What wrecks of Time and Storm are crumbling 
here! 
The rocks that seemed eternal shattered lie, 
And pines that sang their glorias to the sky 

In mute dismemberment stretch prone and drear. 



The Golden State 133 

Beneath this gloomful shade, wide-spreading near, 
What hidden thoughts in loneliness may sigh, 
What spirits of the past may wander by, 

Their cheeks bedewed with unavailing tear! 

But look beyond : the towering summits glow 
With grand magnificence of dazzling light, 

That tints with rainbow hues their bosoming snow. 

And as we gaze, a more than mortal might 
Lifts the rapt soul from all the glooms below 

To faiths that blaze immaculately bright. 

Edward Robeson Taylor. 



IN TEHACHAPI 

Cold is the wind upon the mountain side, 
{For she, — my lady, — she is far from me), 

White is the snow and thick the mists that hide 
Thy face, Tehachapi! 

Stiffly the yuccas stand in mantles white, 
(Garments unwonted, carried shiveringly) , 

While desert cactus, sands, and storm unite, 
Blending impartially. 

But not forever lingers Winter here 

(For there is always summer in the heart), 

The South wind whispers, and the hills are clear, 
The thick fog falls apart. 



134 Golden Songs of 

The Summer's gentle touch shall never fail, — 
(Because, — my lady, — she will come to me), 

Blue are the skies beyond the mists that veil 
Thy face, Tehachapi! 

David Starr Jordan. 



ST. JOHN OF NEPOMUC 

One summer I Columbused John, in Prague, that 

deadly Bush League town. 
I'd quit 'em cold on pictures and cathedrals for a 

while. 
I hung around for Ma and Sis (Good Lord, there 

wasn't one they'd miss — 
Pale martyrs till you couldn't sleep — Madonnas by 

the mile!). 

I read some dope in Baedeker about a tablet on the 

bridge, 
And how they slipped this poor old scout the double 

cross for fair. 
I'm off" High Brow historic truck, but this old boy 

of Nepomuc, 
You must admit he was the goods. Believe me, he 

was there! 



The Golden State 135 

The King was Wenzel Number Four. John was 

Sky Pilot for the Court. 
King gets a hunch that Mrs. King has something on 

her mind. 
He goes to sleuthing more and more. He says — 

" Gadzooks, I'll have their gore ! " 
(Don't ever let 'em string you on that bunk that 

love is blind!) 

The Queen (I'll bet she was some queen) she tangoes 
blithely on her way, 

And fails to see the storm clouds on the regal hus- 
band's dome. 

I got him guessed, that Wenzel guy, harpoons a 
girl that's young and spry, 

And tries to seal her up for life in the Old People's 
Home! 

The way I had it figured out she married him to 

please her folks : 
"Our son-in-law, the King, you know!" (Some 

speed! I guess that's poor?) 
So, when she sights a Maiden's Dream, some real 

live wire that's made the team 
Well, she sits up and notices, like any girl. Why, 

sure! 

Old Wenzel can't quite cinch the case, but what he 
doesn't know, he thinks. 



136 Golden Songs of 

The lump he calls a heart congeals beneath his fancy- 
vest. 

He sends for poor old Father John and says as 
follows — "I am on ! 

I merely lack a few details ! What hath the Queen 
confessed?" 

He holds the court upon the bridge. " Speak up," 

he says, " or otherwise 
These spears will thrust you down to death ! Come 

through! I am the King! 
Kick in! What did my spouse confess?" The 

Queen sends frantic S. O. S. . . . 
Maybe I sort of dozed, but well — here's how I got 

this thing . . . 

He saw the startled courtiers, straining their ears ; 
He saw the white Queen swaying, striving to stand ; 
He saw the soldiers tensely gripping their spears, 
Waiting the King's command. 
He heard a small page drawing a sobbing breath ; 
He heard a bird's call, poignant and sweet and low ; 
He heard the rush of the river, spelling death, 
Mocking him, down below, 

But he only said, " My Liege, 

To my honor you lay siege, 

And that fortress you can never overthrow. " 
He thought of how he had led them, all the years; 
He thought of how he served them, death and birth; 



The Golden State 137 

He thought of healing their hates, stilling their 

fears . . . 
Humbly, he weighed his worth. 
He knew he was leaving them far from the goal ; 
He knew with a deep joy it was safe and wise . . . 
He knew that now the pale Queen's pitiful soul 
Would awake and arise, 

And he only said, " My King, 

Every argument you bring 

Merely sets my duty forth in sterner guise." 

He felt the spears' points, merciless, thrust him 

down ; 
He felt the exquisite, fierce glory of pain; 
He felt the bright waves eager, reaching to drown, 
Engulf him, body and brain : 

He sensed cries, faint and clamorous, far behind; 
He sensed cool peace, and the buoyant arms of love; 
He sensed like a beacon, clear, beckoning kind, 
Five stars, floating above . . . 

To the ones who watched, it seemed 
That he slept . . . and smiled . . . and 

dreamed . . . 
"And the waters were abated . . . and the 
dove" ... 

And there I was on that old bridge . . . boob 
Freshman me on that same bridge! 



138 Golden Songs of 



The lazy river hummed and purred and sang a 

sleepy song . . . 
Of course, I know it listens queer, but gad, it was 

so real and near, 
I stood there basking in the sun for goodness knows 

how long. 

Sometimes I see it even now : I see that little, lean, 

old saint 
Put up against the shining spears his simple nerve 

and pluck : 
And once, by Jove, you know, he came right down 

beside me in the game . . . 
We know who made the touchdown then, old John 

of Nepomuc ! 

Ruth Comfort Mitchell. 



EL PONIENTE 

Beneath the train the miles are folded by : 

High and still higher thro' the vibrant air 

We mount and climb. Silence and brazen glare; 

Desert and sage-brush ; cactus ; alkali ; 

Tiny, low-growing flowers, brilliant, dry; 

A vanishing coyote lean and spare, 

Lopes slowly homeward with a backward stare 

To jig-saw hills cut sharp against the sky. 



The Golden State 139 

In the hard turquoise rides a copper sun: 

Old hopes come thronging with an urge, a zest : 

Beside the window gliding wires run, 

Binding two oceans. Argosy and quest! 

Old dreams remembered to be dreamed and done! 

It is young air we breathe. This is the West ! 

Ruth Comfort Mitchell. 



IN THE MOHAVE 

As I rode down the arroyo through yuccas belled 
with bloom 
I saw a last year's stalk lift dried hands to the 
light, 
Like age at prayer for death within a careless room, 
Like one by day o'ertaken, whose sick desire is 
night. 

And as I rode I saw a lean coyote lying 

All perfect as in life upon a silver dune, 
Save that his feet no more could flee the harsh light's 
spying, 
Save that no more his shadow would cleave the 
sinking moon. 



140 Golden Songs of 

O cruel land, where form endures, the spirit fled ! 
You chill the sun for me with your gray sphinx's 
smile, 
Brooding in the bright silence above your captive 
dead, 
Where beat the heart of life so brief, so brief a 
while ! 

Patrick Orr. 



THE WATER OUZEL 

Little brown surf -bather of the mountains! 

Spirit of foam, lover of cataracts, shaking your 
wings in falling waters! 

Have you no fear of the roar and rush when Nevada 
plunges — 

Nevada, the shapely dancer, feeling her way with 
slim white fingers? 

How dare you dash at Yosemite the mighty — 

Tall, white limbed Yosemite, leaping down, down 
over the cliff? 

Is it not enough to lean on the blue air of mountains ? 

Is it not enough to rest with your mate at timber- 
line, in bushes that hug the rocks ? 

Must you fly through mad waters where the heaped- 
up granite breaks them? 



The Golden State 141 

Must you batter your wings in the torrent ? 
Must you plunge for life or death through the foam ? 

Harriet Monroe. 



CALIFORNIA POPPIES 

With dreams, and dust of dreaming, sweet and dim, 
A hill all song — Great Pan had not disdained it; 
Gold cups, with sunshine rippling o'er the rim, 
And slender stems to break when you have 
drained it. 

Mary Carolyn Davies. 



CALIFORNIA 

Blue, blue, April blue — 

A drift of white, and a rift of blue, 
A dream of white and a gleam of blue, 

Blue, blue, blue! 

Gold, gold, poppies' gold, 

A flare of gold, and a glare of gold, 
A hint of green, and a glint of gold, 

Gold, gold, gold! 

Mary Carolyn Davies, 



142 Golden Songs of 

TO THE SUMMER SUN 
(Coronado) 

Great sun, why are you pitiless? 
All day your glance is hard and keen 
Upon the hills that once were green 
Where summer, sere and passionless, 
Now lies brown- f rocked against the sky 
And makes of them her resting place 
Since she has drunk the valleys dry. 
You never turn away your face 
And I, who love you, cannot bear 
Your long, barbaric, searching look 
Down through the low cool flights of air; 
Your tirelessness I cannot brook, 
For all my body aches with light 
And you have glutted me with sight, 
With flooding color made me blind 
To homely things more soft and kind, 
Till I have longed for clouds to roll 
Between you and my naked soul 
O Great Beloved, hide away 
That I may miss you for a day! 

Marguerite Wilkinson. 



The Golden State 143 



THE MOUNTAIN LILAC 

Upon the hills, 

Upon the little foothills, 

Out there, beyond the pungent sage of the mesa, 

A film of blue has shadowed the soft green 

That followed the rains of spring. 

And into the mountains, 

Back behind the foothills, 

The mist of fine, elusive blue is rising, 

Even as smoke might rise from spreading fires 

Long smouldering near the earth. 

The golden sun pitched camp upon the hills, 

After the long gray rains had washed them clean, 

And where he wandered, 

And where his fingers touched it, 

The earth grown hot with love of his bright beauty, 

Gave back this smoke 

Soon to be broken by the flaring flame 

Of mimulus and tarweed. 

Soon through this living mist, 

This dear blue smoke, 

Will the sun-kindled summer break and burn 

Upon the hills. 

Marguerite Wilkinson. 



144 Golden Songs of 



WITH THE TREES : A PROSE POEM 

The liveoaks are my soldiery, gnarled and resis- 
tant, bearded with grey-green, drooping mosses. 
They stand about my dwelling staunch, tireless, un- 
flinching, the brave masters of today and to-morrow, 

The sweet pepper trees are my fellows and com- 
panions, full of sympathy, gay, friendly, delicate, 
and tactful, demanding neither too much nor too 
little of me, waving long plumes in the breeze, flash- 
ing bright berries in the sun. When I go out I seek 
them, and when I come in I bring them with me. 

The eucalyptus trees are my poets and idealists, 
stripping off ruthlessly the binding withered bark 
of today, ready to stand nude under the sun in the 
truth of to-morrow, with high borne heads, acquies- 
cent in the beauty of life and death. 

The sycamores are my choice and careful advisers, 
remote and infrequently sought, demonstrating 
clearly that one way is not so good as another, profit- 
ing by the tears shed in springtime, taking the way 
of their nature, following the course of the hill 
streams, discriminating between this and that. 

The olive trees are my ghosts, my memories of all 
that has been, lingering in silver-grey presence near 
the life that now is, turning my thoughts back and 
inward upon grey days of pain and sadness, or silver 
days of joy, that I may remember and be wise. 



The Golden State 145 

Below me and about me are also the fair fruit 
trees that live but for the hope of fragrant blossoms, 
that are to me as souls that strongly love. 

At night, slowly and serenely, rises the mist from 
the ocean until it encloses my hillside dwelling, wrap- 
ping me close in tremulous silence with the trees. 
And in the morning, comes the sun, the revealer, to 
give us over to each other anew. 

Make me to understand you aright, I beseech you, 
my soldiers, my friends, my poets, my prophets, 
my ghosts, my radiant lovers, my trees fair- favored 
and at peace! 

Make me hardy and determined as yourselves, O 
liveoaks near my dwelling! 

Grant me somewhat of your strange, silent sym- 
pathy, sweet pepper trees ! 

Inspire me to the quest of beauty and truth, be- 
loved eucalyptus! 

Counsel out of many sorrows grant me, O distant 
and sagacious sycamores! 

Yield me prescience and wisdom, O ghostly olives ! 

Make my love to be fragrant and mighty as yours, 
dear trees of blossom and fruit burden ! 

Give me abundantly, all of you, of your mani- 
fold gifts, for all I am and for all that I give forth! 

Such is my desire while I am with the trees. 

Marguerite Wilkinson. 



VALE 

Her gaunt sierras edged with fire or snow, 
Cutting the burnished sky, her steep on steep 

Of tawny-breasted hills, her golden fields, 
I might not hope to keep. 

T And I may never go again to find 
The topaz glory of her mellow days, 

The blessed fragrance of her sapphire nights, 
And softly sing their praise. 

But I shall keep her beauty to the end, 

For beauty changes those who love it most, — 

And through my heart the echoing rhythms beat 
Of waves upon her coast. 



AUTHOR AND TITLE INDEX 

PAGE 

Abalone Shell, An Grace MacGowan Cooke 75 

Amateurs Geroid Robinson 123 

Anderson, Maxwell 

Youth's Songs 122 

Angelus, The Bret Harte 36 

Anonymous 

" Days of 'Forty-Nine, The " 4 

As I Came Down Mount Tamalpais Clarence Urmy 104 

At the Stevenson Fountain Wallace Irwin 83 

Atkins, David 

Trail, The 69 

Atkins, Henry 

To Virginia 71 

Austin, Mary 

Neither Spirit nor Bird 79 

Ballad of the Gold Country, A Helen Hunt Jackson 8 

Barrington, Pauline B. 

In a Garden 120 

Bashford, Herbert 

Morning in Camp 108 

Night in Camp 108 

Bed of Fleur-de-Lys, The Charlotte Perkins Gilman 80 

Bells of San Gabriel Charles Warren Stoddard 41 

Bells of San Juan Capistrano, The Charles Keeler 126 

Black Vulture, The George Sterling 57 

Burgess, Gelett 

Ebb Tide at Noon 92 

Song of the New Year, A . . . . . „ 92 

Butler, Jennie McBride 

Wind of the South 101 

California Ina Coolbrith 29 

California Mary Carolyn Davies 141 

California Easter Mass, A Charles K. Field 112 

California of the South Grace Ellery Channing 102 

California Poppies Mary Carolyn Davies 141 

California Song, A Clarence Urmy 106 

147 



148 Index 



PAGE 

Camp fire, The Margaret Adelaide Wilson 103 

Carruth, William Herbert 

Each in His Own Tongue 89 

"Cauldron, The" Francis Walker 100 

Channing, Grace Ellery 

California of the South 102 

Cheney, John Vance 

Coyote , 64 

Presidio Hill 62 

Cheney, Warren 

January 86 

Child Heart, The Charles Keeler 129 

Clover. Madge 

In Carmel Bay 87 

Clover, Samuel Travers 

When Zephyrs Blow 86 

Cooke, Grace MacGowan 

Abalone Shell, An 75 

COOLBRITH, INA 

California 29 

When the Grass Shall Cover Me 35 

Coyote John Vance Cheney 64 

Crane, Lauren E. 

Song, The (From " Juanita ") 3 

Creed of Desire, The. Bruce Porter 11 1 

Daggett, Rollin M. 

My New Year's Guests 13 

Davtes, Mary Carolyn 

California 141 

California Poppies 141 

Dawson, Emma Frances 

Old Glory 72 

" Days of 'Forty-Nine, The " Anonymous 4 

Dennen, Grace Atherton 

Gold-of-Ophir Roses 90 

Driscoll, Marjorie Charles 

Song of Thomas the Rhymer, The 124 

Duff, James Leo 

Mater Dolorosa 125 

Each in His Own Tongue William Herbert Carruth 89 

Ebb Tide at Noon Gelett Burgess 92 

El Canelo Bayard Taylor 23 



Index 149 



PAGE 

El Dorado : A Song Charles Mills Gayley 61 

El Poniente Ruth Comfort Mitchell 138 

El Vaquero Lucius Harwood Foote 25 

Evening Edward Pollock 19 

Field, Charles K. 

California Easter Mass, A 1 12 

Years, The 1 12 

Foote, Lucius Harwood 

El Vaquero 25 

Forest Couplets Clarence Urmy 107 

Gayley, Charles Mills 

El Dorado : A Song 61 

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins 

Bed of Fleur-de-Lys, The 80 

Gold-of-Ophir Roses Grace Atherton Dennen 90 

Hague, Eleanor (translator) 

O Blanca Virgen a Tu Ventana ! 1 

Hardy, Irene 

Wedding-Day Gallop, A 76 

Harte, Bret 

Angelus, The 36 

Reveille, The 38 

What the Bullet Sang 40 

Heart's Return, The Edwin Markham 54 

Heron, Herbert 

To William Vaughn Moody no 

In a Garden Pauline B. Barrington 120 

In an Alameda Field Anna Catherine Markham 94 

In Carmel Bay Madge Clover 87 

In Tehachapi , David Starr Jordan 133 

In the Mohave Patrick Orr 139 

In the Mojave Charles F. Lummis 84 

In the States Robert Louis Stevenson 44 

In the Valley Yone Noguchi 109 

In Yosemite Valley Joaquin Miller 44 

Indirection Richard Realf 21 

Iphigenia in Aulis Charles Phillips 97 

Irwin, Wallace 

At the Stevenson Fountain 83 



150 Index 



PAGE 

Jackson, Helen Hunt 

Ballad of the Gold Country 8 

January Warren Cheney 86 

Jeffers, Robinson 

Let Us Go Home to Paradise 114 

Jordan, David Starr 

In Tehachapi 133 

Joy of the Hills, The Edwin Markham 52 

Just California John Steven McGroarty 84 

Keeler, Charles 

Bells of San Juan Capistrano, The 126 

Child Heart, The 129 

Pescadero Pebbles 128 

Lafler, Henry Anderson 

White Feet of Atthis, The 66 

Wireless 65 

Last Days, The George Sterling 55 

Let Us Go Home to Paradise Robinson Jeffers 114 

Luck Dare Stark 124 

Lummis, Charles F. 

In the Moj ave 84 

Lyric Joaquin Miller 46 

Lyric , Joaquin Miller 47 

Man with the Hoe, The Edwin Markham 50 

Markham, Anna Catherine 

In an Alameda Field 94 

Markham, Edwin 

Heart's Return, The 54 

Joy of the Hills, The 52 

Man with the Hoe, The 50 

Mater Dolorosa James Leo Duff 125 

McGroarty, John Steven 

Just California 84 

Midsummer East and West Virna Woods 130 

Miller, Joaquin 

In Yosemite Valley 44 

Lyric 46 

Lyric 47 

Mitchell, Ruth Comfort 

El Poniente 138 

St. John of Nepomuc 134 



Index 151 



PAGE 

Monroe, Harriet 

Water Ouzel, The 140 

Morning in Camp Herbert Bashford 108 

Mountain Lilac, The Marguerite Wilkinson 143 

Mountain, The Edward Robeson Taylor 132 

My New Year's Guests Rollin M. Daggett 13 

Neither Spirit nor Bird Mary Austin 79 

Nero Clark Ashton Smith 116 

Newman, Fanny Hodges 

To Paleolithic Man 98 

Night in Camp Herbert Bashford 108 

Noguchi, Yone 

In the Valley 109 

O Blanca Virgen a Tu Ventana ! 

Eleanor Hague (translator) 1 

Old Glory Emma Frances Dawson 72 

On a Picture of Mount Shasta by Keith 

Edward Rowland Sill 47 

Orr, Patrick 

In the Mohave 139 

Payson, Mahdah 

To My Mountain 100 

Pescadero Pebbles Charles Keeler 128 

Phillips, Charles 

Iphigenia in Aulis 97 

Pollock, Edward 

Evening 19 

Porter, Bruce 

Creed of Desire, The hi 

Presidio Hill John Vance Cheney 62 

Realf, Richard 

Indirection 21 

Reveille, The Bret Harte 38 

Robinson, Geroid 

Amateurs 123 

Rogers, Robert Cameron 

Rosary, The 88 

Rosary, The Robert Cameron Rogers 88 



152 Index 



PAGE 

Santa Barbara Beach Ridgeley Torrence no 

Shepard, Odell 

Windy Morning 115 

Shinn, Milicent Washburn 

When Almonds Bloom 75 

Sill, Edward Rowland 

On a Picture of Mount Shasta by Keith 47 

Skinner, Constance Lindsay 

Song of Cradle-Making 95 

Smith, Clark Ashton 

Nero 116 

Song, The (From " Juanita ") Lauren E. Crane 3 

Song of Cradle-Making Constance Lindsay Skinner 95 

Song of the New Year, A Gelett Burgess 92 

Song of Thomas the Rhymer, The 

Marjorie Charles Driscoll 124 

St. John of Nepomuc Ruth Comfort Mitchell 134 

Stark, Dare 

Luck 124 

Sterling, George 

Black Vulture, The 57 

Last Days, The 55 

Voice of the Dove, The 56 

Stevenson, Robert Louis 

In the States 44 

Stoddard, Charles Warren 

Bells of San Gabriel 41 

Stork, Charles Wharton 

Yosemite Strophes 131 

Taylor, Bayard 

El Canelo 23 

Taylor, Edward Robeson 

Mountain, The 132 

To My Mountain Mahdah Payson 100 

To Paleolithic Man Fanny Hodges Newman 98 

To the Colorado Desert Madge Morris Wagner 81 

To the Summer Sun Marguerite Wilkinson 142 

To Virginia Henry Atkins 71 

To William Vaughn Moody Herbert Heron no 

Tompkins, Juliet Wilbur 

Western Blood n.3 



Index 153 



PAGE 
TORRENCE, RlDGELEY 

Santa Barbara Beach no 

Trail, The David Atkins 69 

Urmy, Clarence 

As I Came Down Mount Tamalpais 104 

California Song, A 106 

Forest Couplets 107 

Voice of the Dove, The George Sterling 56 

Wagner, Madge Morris 

To the Colorado Desert 81 

Walker, Francis 

" Cauldron, The " 100 

Water Ouzel, The Harriet Monroe 140 

Wedding-Day Gallop, A Irene Hardy 76 

Western Blood Juliet Wilbur Tompkins 113 

What the Bullet Sang Bret Harte 40 

When Almonds Bloom Milicent Washburn Shinn 75 

When the Grass Shall Cover Me Ina Coolbrith 35 

When Zephyrs Blow Samuel Travers Clover 86 

White Feet of Atthis, The Henry Anderson Lafler 66 

Wilkinson, Marguerite 

Mountain Lilac, The 143 

To the Summer Sun 142 

With the Trees : A Prose Poem 144 

Wilson, Margaret Adelaide 

Campfire, The 103 

Wind of the South Jennie McBride Butler 101 

Windy Morning Odell Shepard 115 

Wireless Henry Anderson Lafler 65 

With the Trees : A Prose Poem. . .Marguerite Wilkinson 144 
Woods, Virna 

Midsummer East and West 130 

Years, The Charles K. Field 1 12 

Yosemite Strophes Charles Wharton Stork 131 

Youth's Songs Maxwell Anderson 122 



